Back in the 1970s, when I was first exposed to the idea of decriminalizing illegal drugs, it seemed like a good idea. My interest was abstract: I didn’t smoke pot. My wife and I signed a marijuana decriminalization petition one evening around 1980 for a group that acted like they had fallen out of a Cheech and Chong movie. They asked if we could contribute a joint or two to the cause. They were utterly shocked when we told them: “We don’t smoke pot.” They just could not imagine that anyone would support decriminalization without a more personal interest.

There’s no question that making drugs illegal creates serious problems for our criminal justice system. It clogs the courts, it corrupts police officers and government officials, and it funds some really sleazy people. All of this is true — but it turns out that there are some substantial social costs on the other side that simply don’t get any attention. While it may sound like I have been watching Reefer Madness (1936)– a tragically overwrought portrayal of the dangers of marijuana — it turns out that mental illness is one of those social costs.

A surprising number of scholarly studies in the last 25 years have demonstrated that marijuana use seems to cause an increase in psychoses such as schizophrenia, and somewhat less dramatic mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder.

Let me emphasize: This isn’t just correlation analysis — finding that people with a current mental illness are disproportionately potheads. I am well aware that people with significant mental illness problems tend to “self-medicate” using various psychoactive drugs (including alcohol). No, these are longitudinal studies that show the marijuana use comes first, with the mental illness later in life.

The first of these, involving Swedish conscripts, was published in the Lancet in 1987. Those who had used marijuana heavily by age 18 were six times more likely to develop schizophrenia. A British medical journal paper published in 2002 performed a longitudinal study in New Zealand and found that:

Firstly, cannabis use is associated with an increased risk of experiencing schizophrenia symptoms, even after psychotic symptoms preceding the onset of cannabis use are controlled for. … Secondly, early cannabis use (by age 15) confers greater risk for schizophrenia outcomes than later cannabis use (by age 18). The youngest cannabis users may be most at risk because their cannabis use becomes longstanding.

On an individual level, cannabis use confers an overall twofold increase in the relative risk for later schizophrenia. At the population level, elimination of cannabis use would reduce the incidence of schizophrenia by approximately 8%, assuming a causal relationship. Cannabis use appears to be neither a sufficient nor a necessary cause for psychosis. It is a component cause, part of a complex constellation of factors leading to psychosis.

“Big deal! It’s my life! If I want to smoke pot and risk going crazy, that’s my choice!” I would concede that point, except that as of 2002, schizophrenia alone of the mental disorders was costing the United States $63 billion a year in medical costs and in disability payments.”

That’s a good argument against socialized medicine. What’s your point?

“Big deal! It’s my life! If I want to smoke pot and risk going crazy, that’s my choice!” I would concede that point, except that as of 2002, schizophrenia alone of the mental disorders was costing the United States $63 billion a year in medical costs and in disability payments.”

That’s a good argument against socialized medicine. What’s your point?

The point is that pot smokers end voting for Obama and other people lives will be affected by it.

Let the Nanny State take care of your health, and pretty soon it starts dictating what you cannot do, because it would raise costs. This quickly spreads far beyond the negative side-effects of recreational drug use, to monitoring your weight, what foods you eat, how much time off you should get to keep your stress low, what you should be exposed to in the media to keep your blood pressure down…

Well, Mr. Cramer, it seems to me that your argument is rather poorly thought out- you conclude: “…instead of decriminalizing marijuana, we should be looking at discouraging alcohol — and recognizing that while Prohibition didn’t work, there may be approaches more educational, and less drastic, that can.”
Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol, the War on Drugs hasn’t worked on drugs, and somehow this is your argument against decriminalizing marijuana?
Besides, your point that ‘so-and-so’ costs ‘billions $’ in healthcare has been used to exhaustion against tobacco, trans fats, even gun ownership, and is a prime example of collectivist attitude that I find extremely off-putting.

I support the legalizing of Pot, for simple reason: outlawing it does more harm than good in costs for police work, courts, prisons and all of that. Socially, its comparatively less dangerous than the legal drug alcohol, and of course we all know how great a success the prohibition was.

I work in the field of criminal justice and i can say that roughly about 80% of my cases are drug and alcohol related. Drug-related in the way that addicts go stealing to finance their addiction, while people under the influence of alcohol become violent (again, i´d say about 80% of violent crimes are alcohol-related). Violent crimes because of pot? Zero. Drug-related crimes because of pot? Maybe 1% or 2%, the rest is Heroin/Cocain.

So, while smoking pot certainly is not good for the body, the mind and your work ethic its far, far less socially damaging than heroin, cocain or alcohol.

Young people who are most in danger from pot may not know enough about schizophrenia to make an informed decision. Their lives may be ruined before they begin. Legalization would probably make pot usage seem OK to even more young people.

Bubba, a schizophrenic is disabled and requires all sorts of aid, not just socialized medicine. Perhaps you should talk with someone who works at a privately sponsored homeless shelter.

The latest scientific conclusions — which are causal, not merely correlative — show that pot use significantly increases the likelihood of mental illness.

And the latest philosophical conclusions, which hold that a man owns his own body and has the right to put into it anythng he damned well pleases, invalidate your “argument” as proving too much.

As for those who oppose decriminalization because, owing to our semi-socialized medical system, tax funds often go to the treatment of persons who harm themselves with drugs, you’re using one instance of government overreach to justify another government invasion of individuals’ rights. Friends of freedom would abolish both; only paternalists who think “society” has the right and the ability to run others’ lives for them would use one to justify the other.

Which. come to think of it, is a perfect schematic for how liberals operate.

Your final point sounds like a better argument for ending America’s redistributive economy than for continuing to allow the government to overreach. For one, I’m sick of the government buying its way into controlling me by giving my money to someone else. I get neither the benefit of the transfer payment, nor the liberty that should come with not being on the dole.

Granted, I’m actually somewhat allergic to marijuana smoke, so the odds of me ever using said liberty, in this case, are rather small. None the less, the overall complaint stands.

As for your sudden realization that pot isn’t harmless, any of us who have had to live with addicts could have told you that, a long time ago.

Your problem is that you’re looking for the perfect optimum in life for humanity, rather than coming to terms with the messy ineffective reality. (how very socialist of you

As for the science you quote — so far, every study like that has been shown to be junk science, mainly because marijuana is illegal and often polluted by nasty toxins, so it’s impossible to study. Also, a lot of those studies are using dubious statistical methods. It’s just like the AGW scam, there is grant money in publishing papers that suit the political agenda, and a huge industry depends on the income that is generated by the scam.

Beside that whether you support it or not or whether it illegal or not, the sad fact is, it’s available everywhere to anyone(unlike tobacco and alcohol), and all the prohibition does is make gangsters rich and poison kids with glass residues and other muck.

The tragedy is, most kids know their marijuana is poisoned, and they don’t care — at that age they think they live forever. Someone who is OK with risking their lungs isn’t going to be put off by jail, besides that, bad things only ever happen to ‘other people’. At what level of punishment will you draw the line? COPD is easily acquired by smoking this stuff and it’s a life sentence of torture.

Now the questions is, do you want life to be safe only for those who are perfect in your eyes, that is, smart enough to stay away from drugs or those obedient to authority, or — do you want even the ‘undeserving stupid and rebellious’ to be reasonable safe?

We abolished the prohibition of alcohol that created legions of blind and crippled people, just as we legalised abortion to prevent angel-makers from killing women. Those things are not legal because we support them (we don’t) but because they are the lesser evil.

It comes down to which is worse? The problems we face continually with alcohol or the problems we **might** face with marijuana. People are going to get high off of something, and based on my experience, potheads are less of a threat than alcoholics by a wide margin. I’ve never heard of a guy lighting up a joint and flying off into a rage fueled by marijuana and beating his wife and kids. I’ve heard plenty of stories of drunks who have, and have nearly witnesses that behavior on several occasions.

Just give the people secure self-defense rights and let the chips fall where they may. The people will sort it out.

Cannabis use appears to be neither a sufficient nor a necessary cause for psychosis. It is a component cause, part of a complex constellation of factors leading to psychosis.

As I understand it, this truly is the honest assessment. There is much more to discover about this apparent connection before you can say “pot = madness”.

Stating “pot came first” at this stage is absurd. There is no way of conclusively demonstrating that these people didn’t have latent pschological conditions that were perhaps exacerbated by pot…they were criminals, in the study cited – an abberrant subset to begin with.

Anecdotally, pot use is fairly common, yet we are not ravaged by mass psychotic outbreaks.

Quite aside from the liberal argument over self-ownership….I choose what to ingest, not the government….if you believe it imposes ‘costs’, you might wish to eradicate the illegal government mandates that force costs upon others.

I have heard much about this Clayton Cramer guy, all good, yet the more I read, the less justified I consider such praise to be.

Well – having used pot twice in my life and the second time experiencing a debilitating effect that would truly alarm a vibrant young man and exactly at the wrong time. So, I got religion and prayed that everything would be alright and my deal with GOD was that I would never use it again. GOD kept his end of the bargain and I kept mine. The point of this story that happened almost 45 years ago is that I am not a user or purveyor of the substance. However, I strongly favor legalization and as for the STUDIES? Hey, you offer grants to study something – My life depends on continuing research grants – I love money – I want to please you – tell me the desired results that you are seeking – deliver money and I will deliver the desired results.

After the Global Warming fiasco, I find it extremely pathetic that members of the general public would continue to fund,with their tax dollars, and believe scientists. The Scientific Community ranks alongside Politicians, Lawyers and Ponzi Schemers in trustworthiness. Any test or study can be manipulated to deliver desired results. The results in this article are like all other Scientific?!!? research??!!?? another desired result produced for $$$$$$$$. In all things SEEK THE TRUTH by following the $$$$$$ MONEY $$$$$$ TRAIL !!$$$$$$

The article misses the point. Even if these medical studies are completely true, i.e, that marijuana use is linked to mental disorders, what is the current law enforcement approach doing to alleviate the situation?
As in the case of alcohol prohibition, people are going to use drugs whether legal or not. What about the billions spent each year on prisons, lawyers and law enforcement? Here is the question that no one can answer: What is our exit strategy in the war on drugs? If prohibition hadn’t been repealed, our prisons would be filled with violent and non-violent alcohol abusers, and corruption and alcohol trafficking related violence would be as bad or worse than the days of Al Capone. As in alcohol prohibition, drug prohibition is a cure worse than the disease. If indeed, marijuana is making people crazy, the drug war is doing absolutely nothing to solve the problem. What is our exit strategy in the war on drugs? The drug war has been going on for forty years and has nothing to show for it. Prohibition doesn’t work, and furthermore, it never will. Although pot smokers will of course support legalization, why would non-users want to support an open ended, never-ending corrupt government boondoggle, that has no tangible results other than overcrowded prisons.

I find the article silly. Heavy use at 15? Really? Does anyone advocate teens doing drugs. Is heavy use of many things from chips to soda not a health risk? Where does it end?

I will say this in defense of pot. In the 80s I would get up early on Sunday AM, put ice in the bong, fill the bowl with some Jamaican red, turn on Jimmy Swaggert and laugh like mad. I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone could send this fraud money. Sure enough, a short while later there was Jimmy with a prostitute in a hotel room. Does this mean pot can cause clairvoyance. lol

So the percentage use of marijuana over the decades should also correlate with the increase or decrease in these psychological disorders. But it doesn’t. So this is a complete hit piece, and you bit on it.

Alcohol costs our society a bunch. More than weed. Gonna prohibit booze (again)? That worked out so well the last time. The war on some drugs is a failure and on many levels. And Bubba, you got that right.

If the use of government dollars is the determinant on whether a drug should be accepted or “discouraged”, I guess we better start cracking down on Starbucks and the makers of Tylenol(Merck?), since as every year thousands of people rely on the government to pay for medical treatment of organ damage caused by chronic use of caffeine and aspirin. Hell, why stop there, we should also “discourage” driving, since every year thousands of egocentric douchebags think that mandatory insurance laws don’t apply to them, and it costs the taxpayer when they wrap their car around a streetlamp.

Actually, that’s all small potatoes. What we really need is a system where the government “discourages” everything except going to work and paying taxes. We might even be able to reduce the debt. Of course, there will have to be a clause exempting Congress, or the whole house of cards will fall.

I have been thinking about the “prohibition does not work” argument. Handguns are prohibited; prohibition does not work. Next time a pot head comes around with a petition, I expect their full support for my petition to make Canada a shall issue jurisdiction.

You could go further. Assault and battery are prohibited, but I still want to smack potheads. Why restrain myself any further?

Welcome to 1936. Let’s see, a small fraction of pot smokers eventually join the 1-3% of psychosis sufferers. For that we should continue an inane policy of criminalizing the use of a cultivated weed. What is the increase in risk of driving a car over walking? Astronomical.

If anyone has had the privilege of perusing the DSM IV or its successor (I was required to) you’ll see why the costs associated with treating mental illness are high. Diagnoses are easy to come by. Many people WANT to be diagnosed as mentally ill because the benefits are out of this world. Many interested parties in the mental health profession want as many people in the system as possible because there’s money to be made and jobs to be secured.

The war against marijuana is ridiculous on its face. Risks are everywhere and unavoidable. Your study simply proves what has been said for a few generations now: Yes there are some ill-effects associated with the drug, but they are few and far between. Not worthy of billions of taxpayer dollars to avoid and certainly not worth locking up the many thousands of respectable people who use it without ill-effects.

…demonstrated that marijuana use seems to cause an increase in psychoses such as schizophrenia, and somewhat less dramatic mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder…Cannabis…is a component cause, part of a complex constellation of factors leading to psychosis.

Heavy marijuana use can be especially devastating in childhood & adolesence, affecting the developing brain.

I know of 2 children who smoked marijuana with their parents from very early childhood. Both children became psychotic in their early 20′s. In my experience, there is no “may” about marijuana’s effects on brain development in childhood and adolesence.

This article fails to balance the harms/costs of prohibition with the benefits. The principal harms: 1) The immense monetary costs of prohibition in law enforcement, incarceration, lost tax revenue. 2) The social costs of prohibition, especially in minority communities where a high percentage of young men are incarcerated for non-violent drug crimes, not to mention the destabilization of entire countries to our south. 3) The enervating effect on a free people of the interventions of nanny state (drug prohibition, helmet laws, anti-fast food ordinances, mandated purchase of health insurance, etc., etc.) together with the intrusive legal enforcement mechanisms. On the other side of the equation we may keep a relative handful of people from hurting themselves. Nor does the author acknowledge the total failure of prohibition actually to keep drugs out of the hands of the users we would protect. Prohibition is wildly expensive, socially destructive and totally ineffective. Other than that, I suppose you could make a case for it.

Not to mention suicides. I had noticed this relationship of drug use and mental illness among people I knew in high school and college. Two who eventually committed suicide. I think anyone who went to high school suspected the connection. Is it also related to bipolar disorder? I suspect it is.

This is very foolish.
NOT ONE of those studies show a direct causal relationship between cannabis use and mental illness.

ALL of them are epidemiological case/control retrospective studies, which cannot, even with PERFECT results, demonstrate causality.

Further, you are wrong to dismiss the idea that folks with PRE-CLINICAL levels of mental illness (who would, by definition, NOT be diagnosed) might be ‘self-medicating’ with cannabis, and thus skew the numbers in the direction we are seeing.

Do note that THC has passed all of the FDA tests for safety and efficacy, which is why it is sold as a ScheduleIII prescription drug known as ‘Marinol’. (if you’re confused by the word ‘dronabinol’, look up the molecular structure of ‘dronabinol’ and the molecular structure of d9THC and see if you can spot any differences. Dronabinol is just a made up word for THC that came from a beaker instead of a plant.)

If these studies you’ve cited actually carried any weight, then Marinol would have been pulled from distribution.

The studies, by the way, are not causative. They do not rule out the possibility of latent psychoses which are simply unmasked by intoxicant use. Also, there’s a big difference between statistical significance and clinical relevance. Twice nothing is still nothing.

But do the costs of prohibition outweigh the costs of increased mental illness? Can the costs of use be paid by the users through the taxing of the substance? The costs of prohibition are borne by all of us.

Clayton – While there may be costs associaed with cannabis use there are costs associated with its being criminalized. What is important in any decision is not the absolute cost of cannabis use, but the cost relative to the cost of its being criminalized. So far you have not made your argument convincing.

I would also like to point out the following: You told us that the cost of schiziophrenia in the US is $63 billion. How much of that is due to cannabis smokers who became mentally ill, but would not have had they not smoked cannabis? Weigh that against all the resources that go in to maintaining a whole police/prosecution establishment to maintain as a criminal activity? Weigh also against the subtle loss of our freedoms in the effort to root out this criminal activity.

The UK Independent carried a series of articles in 2007, disavowing its previous position on Cannabis. Particularly devastating in Britain was a series of cases following widespread usage of “skunk”, an especially strong form of cannabis.

Subsequently, cannabis was re-classified in Britain to a much stronger category of drug than its previous classification.

1. The older studies are generally considered inconclusive because they did not account for genetic predisposition to psychotic episodes. The new study took this into account and used siblings along with documentation of family history of psychotic issues. The new study is quite well done.

2. The new study ONLY makes this claim about young adults, who smoked heavily for 6 years, roughly from the age of 15 to 21. Those people are twice as likely to experience a psychotic episode, when compared to peers that smoke occasionally or not at all. This study makes NO claims about adult usage or occasional usage.

That seems to fit with my experiences, most people I know who began smoking hardcore as kids have serious issues… most people I know who began smoking as adults seem free of the tendency.

(It would be very hard to definitively determine marijuana’s impact on a human body, given that, besides its main mind-altering ingredient THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) “cannabis contains at least 400 different chemicals”.)

If you don’t want to risk going crazy then don’t smoke it. If you don’t want to pay for those who do smoke it and go nuts then don’t vote for big givernment. This article displays exactly the line of thinking that they use for socialized medicine and all other violations of individual liberty. This logic has no logical limit once you start.

So we should leave it illegal based on the medical costs?
That is the same reasoning being used to outlaw foods that cause obesity.
That is the same reasoning behind the move to outlaw tobacco.
That is the same reasoning behind the total state control of all health related issues, that we “all” pay for it through state provided health benefits. Not to mention Michelle Obama telling us that obesity is an issue of patriotism because fat people cannot pass the military induction physical.
How many steps short of state “handling” of the disabled is that?
As Yoda might say, “Prohibition leads to Diet Control. Diet Control leads to State Health Care. State Health Care leads to Eugenics. Eugenics the Dark Side is!”

As a strongly conservative website, shouldn’t your arguements be based around the concept of limited government intrusion into our personal, private life? I had thought that it was the Democrats that favored greater government control.

You said – “Yes there are some ill-effects associated with the drug, but they are few and far between. Not worthy of billions of taxpayer dollars to avoid and certainly not worth locking up the many thousands of respectable people who use it without ill-effects.”

Apply your logic to environmental and safety regulations and you will see that everything the government does is based on a collectivist mentality. If it is not worth it to go after recreational drug use it is nor also okay to have seat belt laws. I can certainly argue that marijuana users are a bigger risk to themselves than me without a seat belt. The law of diminishing returns applies to everything.

#38 toady,
There is almost no cost to tobacco related illness. Those people die younger and don’t collect as much Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and government assisted prescription drug payments. If you don’t live as long you don’t spend as much time in the health care system over their lifespan. Unless you believe, as I do, that marijuana use will shorten your life significantly, your argument sounds better than it really is. But, keep after it. That type of argument is how we got medicinal marijuana legalized.

Not even going to read this. The same can be said for alcohol, which is entirely regulated by the States. Meanwhile, we have withdrawn cough medicine from over-the-counter sales because it could be combined with aspirin and caffeine to make a weight-loss stack, and may cause a stroke in stroke-prone young women that over-use it.

If somebody would kindly make me king, I’ll legalize pot, treat it like cough medicine, and require a prescription from a real, live, medical doctor.

“The most serious Amtrak accident in history was the wreck near Chase, Md., in which 16 people died and 175 were injured when three linked Conrail engines drove through a closed switch and into the path of a high-speed Amtrak train. Crew members of the Conrail train were determined to have been smoking marijuana before the accident.”

I do not want to be driving down the highway at 75 and see bongs being passed in the next car or whiskey being pulled. I do not want to see kids on the play ground lighting up. That is not harmless behavior and not in control of consenting peaceful adults. Legalizing the psycho-entrophic reagents will increase the distribution of said substances and will put the public in danger. The war on drugs is a loosing battle that has to be maintained at the risk of much greater chaos.

Millions have died of lung cancer from smoking cigarettes, not one person has ever gotten lung cancer from marijuana. As the movement to legalize marijuana grows there will be more of these empty headed articles, it is good to go back in time to 1937 and see just why marijuana became illegal. William Randolph Hearst had 800,000 acres of forests in Mexico that he used to make paper for his news chain and he also sold the paper to other publishers, the hemp growers were making a better paper than his and could sell it at a cheaper price. There are actually two hemp plants the female has the THC the male doesn’t. The male plant is what Hearst feared because of competition but he couldn’t demonize it so he attacked the female plant with all sorts of lies. Back in those days Hearst owned the news media, no internet, no talk radio, no television, everyone had one source for news, the newspapers. He stirred up the populace with his lies to get them to demand we save our children and our society from becoming drug crazed marijuana addicts. Watch the movie “Reefer Madness” it is a great example of ignorance over truth, reality, and substance. If marijuana laws on the federal level can be injected with some sense we can put the male plant to use as a tremendous source of industrial employment. In Europe they are building stronger houses from hemp for one third the cost of wood, it is fantastic as clothing, much better than cotton, Henry Ford built some auto bodies from hemp that were a thousand pounds lighter than sheet metal ones and several times stronger. Lighter weight increased gas mileage, superior strength increased safety, Ford had 18 acres of hemp growing on his farm, he said it was a better fuel than gasoline, it burns clean, it is a no brainer folks. Wait there is more, hemp is also a fantastic food, has all the essential amino and fatty acids the body needs in a very easily digestible form. Both Washington and Jefferson farmed hemp, Ben Franklin published his newspapers on hemp, Betsy Ross made our first flag from hemp, Guttenberg printed his bibles on hemp, and both the U. S. CONSTITUTION and DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE were written on hemp. Anything that can be made from wood or petroleum can be produced better and cheaper from hemp. Our country needs new home grown industries, hemp grows in all fifty states, it can help to save the forests, clean our air, create new industries and hundreds of thousands of new jobs. It is being farmed in Canada and Europe we got to get this country going in the right direction if we are ever going to free ourselves from the grip of the arab slave masters and their petroleum addicted lackeys.

Increased use of drugs such as THC, tobacco, and alcohol among people with schizophrenia is well known. There is evidence that this is not “self-medicating” at all. These studies show that negative and positive symptoms do not improve with use of these drugs, and may in fact get worse. What is different is that schizophrenics report heightened sensitivity to the positive rewards associated with the drug as opposed to control subjects. Basically a “better buzz” hence more of the drug is used.

There is no reason to think that this effect begins at the time of diagnosis and lots of reasons to think otherwise. This easily explains the results in the studies cited by the author.

Schizophrenia is not something you “catch” like the flu and it is a long stretch to think that it can be “caused” by something like marijuana. Almost everyone agrees that there is an inherited predisposition and it is likely that the “better buzz” genes are associated with that.

Does anyone have any accurate data on what we actually spend fighting just marijuana? (i.e. what would be saved?) We would still need to spend money on all other drug enforcement and I wonder how much is, in reality, strictly spent on marijuana law enforcement.

Also, have any studies been done on whether smoking marijuana causes cancer? Seems likely that it would. If so, has anyone seen any estimates on the government costs of providing medical care for diseases caused by marijuana smoking?

What about the costs of traffic and work place accidents and injuries that are caused by more wide spread use of legalized marijuana?

I don’t mind legalization so long as all the associated costs are paid by those using it. But like so many liberal schemes, I suspect they want the “right” without the responsibility.

I agree with number 2 poster. Good reason to get government out of our medicine. It is not like those schizos do not have family that should be taking care of them.

Now, onto other news. Federal government spends more than $20b a year on the war against drugs. State and Local governments spend over $50b a year on the war on drugs. State and Federal Prisons spend over $6b per year incarcerating drug offenders. The federal and state governments could collect $33b in taxes on legalized drugs. That’s about $100b in spending or lost revenue.

A large part of the initial draw to drug use is the fact that it is illegal, and thus has a standing up to the man effect. Making it illegal has failed to stop the use of drugs. The ease of getting drugs is so minimal that just about any child in any city or town can find a supplier within the first 24 hours of wanting to buy some. The war on drugs has caused the acceleration of the creation of new drug types: Crack, myth, and so forth. Has caused prescription medications to be used in lieu of the currently illegal versions, and I wonder how much that costs our medical care industry. For those who wish to not ever be caught with illegal drugs and get a criminal record, and cannot obtain prescriptions, they turn to other forms of drugs, such as sniffing glue and other toxic substances to get high. But yeah, those few people who develop schizo, who apparently, according to your own cut and pastes, are genetically likely to acquire the disease. So the question is this, does the marijuana cause the schizo or just move its time table up a bit?

It is your opinion of course to not support legalizing marijuana and I will respect it. But if your whole argument is that it costs the country $66b in order to treat schizos and the drug causes some small fraction of those schizos, then my counter argument is that the drug war costs far outweighs the cost of the schizos and likely causes far more societal problems than the prevention of some unknown number of schizos would.

Ugh. This article brought back some ugly memories. I believe my middle-school learning on upward was significantly impaired as a result of my mother introducing me to regular marijuana use at the age of 12. I had a psychotic break at age 18. After reading this article it makes sense to me as to WHY!

I’ve battled some severe bouts of depression that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. That said, I’m already genetically predisposed to depression as are many people with Finnish/Irish/Dutch/English ancestry and luckily for me my ‘blues’ are usually limited to the winter months. Fortunately (for me), I never liked how Marijane made me feel and quit it once I moved out of my mother’s house and lived on my own at 19.

Unfortunately, the fact that pot was illegal back then didn’t stop my mother from turning her young, teenage daughter into her ‘toke buddy’ along with other ‘partying’.

There’s really no easy answer to this but I’m grateful that my daughter never wanted to experiment with drugs and booze after the horror stories I told her. :\

Finally it comes to me. Most of you are just liars. There is no need for me to analyze the fallacies or absurdities of your arguments because you are just self-centered irresponsible criminals. You who participate in the buying and selling of marijuana are part of organized crime and you don’t care who gets hurt.
The fact that we have prevailed and kept the drug illegal makes the war on drugs a success. For you readers with less experience with criminals let me enlighten you. Anyone who says they have never heard of a violent pothead is a liar. Not only are most violent offenders and sex offenders users but the very act of making this dangerous drug available to vulnerable people is a vicious act of violence.
Let me sum up. You don’t know if Pot is harmless. If it is would you care? Regardless of what you say, you would certainly change your tune if conditions were adversely effecting you or someone you cared dearly about.

First, explain the pharmacology that effects one’s brain to the extent that the person develops a psychosis. Second, make a comparison between teenagers that create a felony and their subsequent development of a psychosis. Then you have an argument.

The fact is that there is no logic in our attitude to controled drug use in the US. You should be able to go to a drug store and pick up any substance that you disire. That is called a free society. Of course, we are far from any concept of a free society. As a physician, I have seen the consequences of our drug policy and can assure you that it distroys lives and creates many more problems than it solves. Consider the savings to the nation of eliminating one half of all prisoners, elimination to the DEA and other control agencies. Consider the fact that doctor visits would be down substantially if you allowed people to self medicate rather than go to the doc’s office and beg for what they need.

I have never supported the legalization of marijuana, or any of the other psychotropic drugs, for the simple reason that my only brother started smoking pot in high school and subsequently fell prey to mental illness. He’s in his mid-fifties now and has never held a job, never had a stable relationship, or a home of his own, and cannot be trusted not to steal from his friends and family. He’s also been in and out of jail for assault. I believe wholeheartedly that he is one of those genetically susceptible people, and that his life could have been normal and functional if he had never touched pot (or the whole plethora of drugs he subsequently indulged in over the decades). As it is, his only worthwhile accomplishment is to serve as an example to the new generations of our family of what not to be.

This is classic Cramer. The guy is smart and well-informed, yet he always seems to draw exactly the wrong conclusions.

Anyone with exposure to pot-users knows the effect it has. It is especially harmful to the young. It impairs brain development, period. It reduces their drive in all sorts of ways (including their sex drives, as intimated by on commenter above). It often condemns them to dysfunction and/or a life of poverty. Does it cause psychosis? Yes, I believe so, as I’ve seen it. Does it seem to affect those who begin to toke up later in life? No, not at all. It seems to only harm the young.

So, what do we do about it? I say decriminalize it for adults, but make really, really harsh penalties for those who give it to children, especially their parents! We absolutely need to protect our young from the irresponsible adults.

As for the cost to society for treatment, who says we have to pay these costs? There is no such mandate. Let’s see, i keep my nose clean as a kid, while others are lighting up and having a good time. I learn to work and make a living, and they don’t. Eventually, they become dysfunctional, and I’m supposed to pay for them? “But, they are the poor unfortunates!” Um, no. They are not unfortunate. They made that bed themselves. I shall not lie in it with them.

#54 Delia – That explains so much. I’m amazed that you are doing as well as you are. Good for you.

I’ve always been ambivalent about legalizing drugs, including marijuana. When I hear pro-drug legalizers talk about the benefits of marijuana, I always come back at them, “What about the costs?” I think the legalizers oversell the benefits without weighing any of the potential costs associated with the drug. I was listening to Montel Williams on Stossel and he sounded pretty compelling, but he was compelling in explaining the benefits without talking about the risks associated with marijuana use. Yes, he served 22 years in the military, but the country does not necessarily owe him the right to smoke weed for his MS (and surprisingly, he’s not upset that the same country is taking away our right to purchase the amount healthcare we need. Guess we can’t have everything,right?).

Countries that have legalized marijuana use have not found the panacea they were looking for. Crime is still high in countries like Portugal and the Netherlands and other lacividious acts occur with drug legalization. Perhaps, I am making a case against legalized marijuana, but I don’t think so. Just don’t tell me that legalizing marijuana will be ALL BENEFITS!!!! and no cost.

To put the marijuana causes schizophrenia trope in context, the total incidence of schizophrenia in the US is about 1%. The finding of the study indicate that the vast majority of possible risk is with heavy juvenile usage. Excessive intake of sugar as a child carries more serious health risks, not to mention alcohol and tobacco.

Show me a series of multi-center, prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled studies that are properly weighted and I will be very interested in their findings. Until then, it is a mixture of junk science, weak science, anecdotal evidence and heartfelt personal testimony… nothing less, nothing more.

I have a 30 year personal experience with a paranoid schizophrenic mother who never smoked pot or drank in excess. It is the saddest most devastating thing imaginable to see a vibrant, beautiful 35 year old mother of four begin to hear voices and spend the last 30 years of her life in various forms of mental health lockdown, electric shock treatment and psychotropic drug overload.

If you want my take on mental health issues we should start at square ONE! The Western Diet slowly destroys every civilization it has been thrust upon. The mass marketing of artificially imitated “food” is killing both our physical and mental health. This is quite possibly the most well documented fact in science today.

Eat lots of organic fruits, vegetables and grains while reducing caloric intake and you WILL increase the potential of a long, happy, healthy life. If you want to smoke some organic weed just remember to do it in moderation since even drinking too much carrot juice can upset homeostasis (you turn a pale orange color)LOL!

Wait a minute Clayton. Are you telling me that prohibition actually reduces drug use among the youth? Alcohol prohibition was eliminated in part to reduce youthful alcohol consumption.

Oh. Wait. I get it. Drugs are different. Alcohol prohibition was a failure. But drug prohibition will be a success. Real soon now. After all we have only had 73 years of national pot prohibition. Another 50 or 100 years should do the trick. Fer sure.

====

Crime is still high in countries that have legalized use because they have not legalized supply. Supply is where the vast majority of drug related crime is located.

In fact legalizing use is a gift to cartels. The profits are maintained as well as the customer base.

What is a threat to the cartels? Legalized supply. We see that in California. With med pot supplies legal, prices for the weed are dropping.

What is it with some people? John McCain–with no other inspiration–wants to regulate my vitamins. Now Cramer decides that common sense and goodness requires that we keep pot illegal, and presumably show re-runs of Reefer Madness to kids who will snicker as much as we did.

I smoked grass in college, law school and afterward. I voted for Nixon, Reagan and Bush. Have two kids, my sex drive, brain and my job. I haven’t puffed in years (since the kids and maybe its age but I don’t like it any more), but still think the criminalization of grass is silly.

This is exactly the reason GOP types lose elections. We want low taxes, a huge defense budget and to toss bad criminals in jail for long terms–and they come out with vitamin regulation and pot laws.

Mr. Cramer, I love your posts. You engage the posters. You are an intelligent man. But you are way off base here. By the test you’ve posited, we ought to ban 3/4 of what americans eat and drink. We do not want a nanny.

“The most serious Amtrak accident in history was the wreck near Chase, Md., in which 16 people died and 175 were injured when three linked Conrail engines drove through a closed switch and into the path of a high-speed Amtrak train. Crew members of the Conrail train were determined to have been smoking marijuana before the accident.”

This Cramer is an idiot who was awake but went back to sleep. Why would anyone capable of independent intelligent thought side with our modern hell-society against the Founding Fathers who grew and smoked hemp.

Hemp was no big deal in the 19th century because it was LEGAL.

Please wake up you jerk. Just wake up. Idiots like you enable organized crime and cause deaths. You must wake up or we will be forced to sweep you aside using any means necessary to regain our freedom from your tyranny.

Let’s issue tags for pot heads just like hunting season for deer
that way instead of costing society for prosecuting these criminals
we can shoot them legally and provide revenue to pay off our debt and take a load of work off the shoulders of law enforcement as well. (just bagged a double bonger)
I did time in the 70′s for possession. Society demanded I pay the price for the crime. I learned that the most prized gift in the world is freedom and POT is a drug that deserves the “drug” distinction. I am no longer a pot head and feel that the penalties are too lenient. This drug is a menace to society and the move to allow medicinal marijuana in many states is a mistake they will live to regret.
I have raised 4 kids, 3 in collage all on deans list just ask them about pot.
Legalize this crap and I want reparations.

I have never supported the legalization of marijuana, or any of the other psychotropic drugs, for the simple reason that my only brother started smoking pot in high school and subsequently fell prey to mental illness. He’s in his mid-fifties now and has never held a job, never had a stable relationship, or a home of his own, and cannot be trusted not to steal from his friends and family. He’s also been in and out of jail for assault.

Rebecca,

I’m so glad to hear that prohibition saved your brother. It only makes sense that prohibition will save many other brothers. Who get their drugs readily from the black market.

To a great extent America is being handed it’ s own opium war with marijuana…With the cultivators and distributors of the hallucingenic implementing and advocating their agenda and incentives by the effectiveness of their product. I would say, in my sense and sobriety, the Chinese who embraced opium, did so with the same disposition as those Americans who embrace marijuana…that is a disposition towards dependency.

It’s interesting how the drug war is a topic that always seems to drag the closet Democrats out. Look at all the pro-prohibitionist posts, after reading the entire thread, there wasn’t a single one which relied on logic to make its thrust, rather, all rely on “a mixture of junk science, weak science, anecdotal evidence and heartfelt personal testimony… nothing less, nothing more.”(thanks to #63 for the quote). Most of the posts bring to mind that person who insists that cigarettes are harmless because Gramps smoked his whole life and made it to 104.

71 is a great example of the BS so many posters on this site indulge in-”Legalize this crap and I want reparations.”. Good call buddy, big government has done so much good for us recently, what we actually need is bigger government, am I right? :rolleyes: You’ll have to wait your turn behind the people who want reparations for slavery, despite never actually being slaves. I’m guessing Con didn’t take the time to realize that this isn’t DU or DailyKos before clicking submit.

We had a drug officer speaking to a group of young people at a school. He stated that they had never had a single person that they arrested for meth who had started with meth. Every one of them had started with marijuana. It does not surprise me but I had never heard it stated flat out before.

The only “drugs” I use are alcohol and pipe tobacco. I smoked pot two times, about fifteen years ago. It was pleasant but illegal and I didn’t try it again. When we moved to our sailboat in preparation to sail to and in the Caribbean, I told everyone who wanted to join us that we had a NO PROHIBITED DRUGS policy because even a trace could lead to confiscation of our sailboat. That was 100% successful. The U.S. Coast Guard has clever means of detecting even a small residual trace and, if it does, the boat can be confiscated. Our boat was inspected routinely several times over the years, and not even a trace was found for the simple reasons that there was nothing there. Once, in port at a Caribbean Island, my wife and I went in our dingy to a local bar. On boarding the dingy to return to our boat, I discovered a plastic bag containing what looked like pot. I threw it overboard. I did not want it on our sailboat.

I favor the legalization of pot and most other now illegal drugs for the following reasons:

1. The United States spends tons of money unsuccessfully interdicting drugs and paying other countries to do so. The efforts are generally unsuccessful except in (a) spending money and (b) making the street prices of such drugs high enough to encourage those who import and sell the stuff to continue to do so.

2. Legalization of drugs and very significant taxation could (a) obviate the expenditure of those funds and (b) greatly diminish the funds going to the “drug lords” who get very rich in the process; the risk element is factored into their costs and their profits are high. In the process, lots of violence spills over from Mexico into the United States. Countries in Latin America have similar problems. Although I think the government wastes far more tax money than it uses productively, it always claims to need more. It could get lots of money by purchasing pot and other now unlawful drugs at the source and selling them, subject to a significant tax. It now imposes high taxes on alcohol and tobacco. I suspect, but do not know, that a tax of 200% or perhaps far more on the drugs purchased by the government at the source would result in street prices sufficiently lower — but not much lower than at present — to drive pushers and their suppliers out of business.

3. Drugs are going to be used, as was alcohol during prohibition.

4. It seems likely that some folks enjoy doing things simply because they are unlawful and therefore “cool.” That would cease to be a factor.

5. If now unlawful drugs are to be sold lawfully, those purchasing them should understand, and sign a waiver to the effect that, they understand that no governmental or insurance funds will be provided for their drug related medical care or rehabilitation. No such funds should be provided.

#77 eor,
Well, think about it. Our legal system makes marijuana just as illegal as meth etc., therefore, many of those who sell marijuana also sell other substances. So, of course the salesman will evenutally try to intoroduce higher profit margin products to the customer. The officer’s argument is a reason to legalize rather than a reason to maintain the status quo.

Of course, if someone simply picked it from their own garden they would likley never meet said meth dealer.

You tripped across a couple of studies where some folks in the business of doing studies and cranking out papers for grant money out together some statistics, and then said well, maaaaaybe. And that’s changed your viewpoint. When I get my barn built, mind if I see if your available to mount on top as a weathervane? No worries, I won’t really be depending on the services to determine which way the wind is actually blowing.

Why the Waxman slam? Simply because your using exactly the same progressive-nanny-stater thought process to justify your ‘new’ position. Hey, look at these bad things that might happen, that’s a great reason to restrict liberty, and regulate behaviour we’re not really all that fond of.

At BEST the argument makes the case for keeping it away from adolescents and teens, for many of the same reasons for restricting their access to alcohol and tobacco products. Which, and stay with me here, because this part is probably counter-intuitive to a lot of folks, is one of the BEST reasons to legalize MJ that I think I’ve heard. Is there anyone left living on planets where the sky is usually blue that thinks the ‘war on drugs’ is a successful strategy for keeping MJ out of the hands of youngsters? Anyone? Bueller? As other commentors have pointed out, and the plain evidence of what’s going on around us on a daily basis overwhelmingly indicate, uh, NO.

Now, can kids easily get their mitts on cigarettes or beer? Not putting anything past really determined and ingenious kids but – not nearly as easy as a quarter ounce of pot. For the very simple reason: that humble store clerk down at the local 7-11 that’s going to card anyone that looks to be under 30 years old is a much more responsible social agent than someone already running under the radar of the law looking to move his product in a de facto unregulated manner to anyone and everyone he can.

Let’s leave alone the economics and additional social costs of this ongoing prohibition. Or maybe not. As was earlier pointed out, those numbers are absolutely outrageous, particularly compared to the health benefit’savings’, which the current policies aren’t realizing, anyway.

The only applicability of the word psychotic here is to the entire policy itself – with the prohibitionists advocating, figuratively, for the nation to keep hitting itself in the face with a hammer. Literally, too. Hitting oneself in the face with a hammer can be fatal – just like the ‘war on drugs’ has been to far too many innocent people – not those ‘scumbag potheads’ that one of the other folks here wanted to have open hunting season on – innocent people and dedicated law enforcement officers killed in botched, overly escalated, militarized raids.

You’re advocating continuing a war on the American people, by the American people.

Over whether or not someone can sit down and smoke a joint after dinner.

We had a drug officer speaking to a group of young people at a school. He stated that they had never had a single person that they arrested for meth who had started with meth. Every one of them had started with marijuana.

You know they almost certainly all used alcohol as well and probably ice cream as well.

The first one is that just as correlation doesn’t allow one to infer causation, neither does temporal succession — in fact, that’s known classically as the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. In this case, when you have a relatively large population — people who have smoked marijuana — with a pretty small subset or people who develop psychosis symptoms, epidemiologically a mere doubling isn’t strong. Add to that the fact that we don’t actually understand the underlying cause of schizophrenia and in fact have good reasons to suspect there may be a collection of different diseases with similar symptoms, there is a real issue with claiming a causal connection at all.

The second point is that there is a strong familial component to the incidence of schizophrenia and other “mental” illnesses. This indicates an inborn inclination that may (actually, probably does) haev a cluster of subclinical symptoms. This both weakness the case for marijuana being causal, and strengthen the case for the greater marijuana use being self-medication of, for example, greater irritability or excitability.

Now, let’s put those two aside. The third issue is that the incidence of psychosis is small in either the dope-smoking or the non-using population. So, by arguing against legalization, you’re arguing that a large population who aren’t subject to the problem should be proscribed from using marijuana based on the ill effects on a small population. Compare this, for example, with alcohol, sugar, or peanut allergies. Would you say peanuts should be illegal because they cause a few people extreme problems?

Or consider guns. We know that people who possess guns, legally or illegally, are much more likely to commit crimes with guns. (Trivially: you can’t commit a crime with a gun if you don’t have one.) On the other hand, we also know that only a very small proportion of gun owners commit crimes with them.

By your reasoning about marijuana, and applying substitution, guns should be made illegal because that would keep the very few people who would commit crimes with them from having them.

I wouldn’t buy that argument. But if that argument is flawed, it would appear your argument about marijuana is similarly flawed, and thus fails.

We had a drug officer speaking to a group of young people at a school. He stated that they had never had a single person that they arrested for meth who had started with meth. Every one of them had started with marijuana. It does not surprise me but I had never heard it stated flat out before.

How do you know they didn’t start out with tobacco? Or mothers milk which contains marijuana analogs? For that matter how do you know they didn’t start out with water and progress to harder stuff?

And of course the officer really wants an end to the drug problem. He hates the overtime and all the money it brings. BTW the DARE program actually increases the number of youth trying drugs so maybe he was in it for the job security after all.

The essay sums with this:
“If anything, instead of decriminalizing marijuana, we should be looking at discouraging alcohol — and recognizing that while Prohibition didn’t work, there may be approaches more educational, and less drastic, that can.”

Prohibition was an all-out attempt at discouraging alcohol use by banning it’s consumption along with manufacture and distribution for consumptive use. And as correctly noted, that was an utter failure. It bred more problems than the “solution” purported to solve.

It’s the same with marijuana.

So banning doesn’t work. What to do? Control it via legislation and taxation – the first step of which (ala ending Prohibition) is to decriminalize it. Once you have controls in place, then you can look to “social engineering” to abate remaining problems.

You can’t get to where you want to be without the step of decriminalization.

Since I fried my brains dropping megadoses of acid back in the 60s, it would be cruel and pointless, at this stage of the game, to put me in jail for smoking a little weed, based on the possibility that it might cause psychosis.

I’m impressed with the level of fury expressed. I sort of expected it.

1. For those who think that there is nothing but correlation in these studies: go back and re-read them. There’s a reason that I pointed to studies that were longitudinal–because these provide a chance to compare people who did NOT have pre-existing mental problems before they started smoking pot, and those who did.

2. I do not dispute in the least that there are substantial social costs to prohibition–I even mentioned that at the beginning. What has long frustrated me is how many people refuse to acknowledge that (like alcohol), marijuana use has substantial social costs as well. You can argue which is the greater cost, of course. But many (although not all) of the responses above seem to be completely and utterly furious at me for pointing out that there is a fraction of the schizophrenic population that is in that condition because of marijuana use.

3. For those of you who desperately want the government out of the health care business–I agree. But the notion that if the government wasn’t doing that, it would solve the problem: nope. It shifts the burden from taxpayers to private charities, and enormous burdens on families who have a member who spirals down into psychosis. If you want to argue that so what, it’s not your problem anymore: you win the pigheaded selfishness award. That’s a very effective way to win elections.

4. Quite a few of the comments above are from people who seem to think that the libertarian solution–let mentally ill homeless people starve on the street corners–is perfectly viable. Guess what? Libertarians are a tiny minority of the population. Most Americans are completely unwilling to see that happen, and the more of some of these temper tantrums you throw in favor of allowing that to happen explains why Ron Paul didn’t beat Obama in the 2008 general election. Most Americans are unprepared to allow the kind of suffering that comes with your elegantly beautiful libertarian solution.

5. For those wondering why drug abuse increases didn’t lead to increases in mental illness: it did. Nashaat N. Boutros, Malcolm B. Bowers, Jr., and Donald Quinlan, “Chronological Association Between
Increases in Drug Abuse and Psychosis in Connecticut State Hospitals,” Journal of Neuropsychiatry and
Clinical Neurosciences [February 1998] 10:48-54, available athttp://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/10/1/48 The increase in homelessness of the 1970s and 1980s was primarily not because of this–but because of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill–but there was a measureable increase in hospitalizations that matched up well with the demographics of those having fun with their drugs.

6. A number are infuriated that alcohol gets a free ride, and marijuana does not. As I pointed out, the problems of alcohol with respect to mental illness are well-known–and maybe even worse. We need to work on discouraging alcohol consumption as well, and for the same reason. My preference would be increased educational efforts at discouraging both marijuana and alcohol abuse, simply because prohibition is not terribly effective.

7. Prohibition didn’t work? Certainly not in big cities. But there were many parts of America where alcohol went from readily available to actually quite difficult to get. And one of the signs of how much difference it made is that cirrhosis of the liver death rates within several years of passage of National Prohibition fell to about half the pre-Prohibition rate–and start rising again a few years after Prohibition fell.

8. Those of you who are convinced that there is a strong analogy between marijuana and guns need to work on your analogies a bit. There is no evidence that gun ownership causes mental illness–while there is evidence that marijuana use causes mental illness. Clear enough?

First, what you assert as scientific fact is dubious at best (see below) and was rejected by such experts as Les Iverson of Oxford.

Second, if it’s true it remains a remote possibility,one nowhere close to thousands of risks (such as with alcohol) . It is not for you – or government -to determine what personal risk individuals should normally take. If it were, no one would climb Mt Everest or drive in a car race.

The data since 1975 shows that marijuana is easily available to teens and over a million teens sell it thanks to prohibition. For you to equate a remote – possibly nonexistent – risk with the horrors inflicted by the cartels (marijuana is thought to provide about 60 percent of their income) is bizarre IMO.

Writing in the prestigious scientific journal The Lancet in 2007, Zammit and
colleagues proclaimed that smoking cannabis could boost one’s risk of
schizophrenia/psychoses by 40 percent or more.

and was one of the primary reasons cited by PM Gordon Brown, ex-Home
Secretary Jacqui Smith and others as the impetus for reclassifying cannabis
in the U.K.

Of course, what the MSM did not report from the Lancet meta-analysis was that empirical data did not support the investigators hypothesis that smoking marijuana caused schizophrenia or other mental illnesses: “Projected
trends for schizophrenia incidence have not paralleled trends in cannabis use over time” (page 326).

So, in order to test Zammit and other’s supposition, investigators at the Keele University Medical School in Britain have now done the obvious, and performed a comprehensive analyses of trends in marijuana use and incidences of schizophrenia and/or psychoses in the United Kingdom from 1996 to 2005.(*Note, average age of diagnosis for schizophrenia is one’s twenties.) Their findings will appear in the journal Schizophrenia Research:

“[T]he expected rise in diagnoses of schizophrenia and psychoses did not occur over a 10 year period,” authors concluded. “This study does not therefore support the specific causal link between cannabis use and incidence of psychotic disorders. … This concurs with other reports
indicating that increases in population cannabis use have not been followed by increases in psychotic incidence.”

Further, the results of a separate clinical trial published earlier this month reported that the recreational use of cannabis does not stimulate the production of dopamine in a manner that is consistent with the development of schizophrenia.

you may publish my name
Jerry Epstein
data courtesy of Paul Armentano, NORML

As in the case of alcohol prohibition, people are going to use drugs whether legal or not.

Are you suggesting that laws don’t influence behavior? Not even a little? That’s clearly wrong. If marijuana is legal, then you can advertise it, and have competitive markets driving down prices. If it is legal, that’s not the case–even if the police aren’t vigorously enforcing such laws. Higher prices will reduce demand. How much reduction there is depends on the elasticity of demand.

As for the science you quote — so far, every study like that has been shown to be junk science, mainly because marijuana is illegal and often polluted by nasty toxins, so it’s impossible to study. Also, a lot of those studies are using dubious statistical methods.

Examples? Details? Or this just what you want to believe?

And I thought that the advantage of marijuana is that it is “natural” and lots of people grow it in the back yard.

As I understand it, this truly is the honest assessment. There is much more to discover about this apparent connection before you can say “pot = madness”.

Except that I didn’t say that. I pointed out that it increases psychosis rates–not that everyone who smokes pot goes crazy.

Stating “pot came first” at this stage is absurd. There is no way of conclusively demonstrating that these people didn’t have latent pschological conditions that were perhaps exacerbated by pot…they were criminals, in the study cited – an abberrant subset to begin with.

Except with a large sample population, you can compare the before and afters–as several of these studies did.

And the notion that pot smokers are “criminals”–well, in a technical sense, but in much of the U.S., no one regards recreational pot use as particularly serious.

Anecdotally, pot use is fairly common, yet we are not ravaged by mass psychotic outbreaks.

You are correct: there haven’t been dozens of random mass murders in schools, malls, universities, etc. over the last two decades where these used to be so rare as to be unknown. No, not at all.

As for the cost to society for treatment, who says we have to pay these costs? There is no such mandate. Let’s see, i keep my nose clean as a kid, while others are lighting up and having a good time. I learn to work and make a living, and they don’t. Eventually, they become dysfunctional, and I’m supposed to pay for them? “But, they are the poor unfortunates!” Um, no. They are not unfortunate. They made that bed themselves. I shall not lie in it with them.

And you wonder why Obama won? Keep talking like this, and hope it isn’t a relative or friend who makes this mistake.

If anyone has had the privilege of perusing the DSM IV or its successor (I was required to) you’ll see why the costs associated with treating mental illness are high. Diagnoses are easy to come by. Many people WANT to be diagnosed as mentally ill because the benefits are out of this world. Many interested parties in the mental health profession want as many people in the system as possible because there’s money to be made and jobs to be secured.

The statement of someone who has clearly never been around someone with schizophrenia.

Yes, there are all sorts of emotional and learning disorders that have a label on them for the reasons that you describe–because there’s a governmental program somewhere to fund them–but this is hardly an accurate description of psychotic disorders.

People can make bath-tub gin and brew their own beer. People can grow bud.

Laws are only followed by the lawful.

Can’t smoke weed? Tell the doctor you’re depressed and he’ll put you on some mind-altering drugs that probably do as much or more harm to your body than marijane.

Booze and pot/drugs et al are definitely harmful to a growing and learning brain who’s functioning is also taking on a plethora of neural responses to rapidly changing hormones…but, wait for it… NOW, children (especially BOYS) are commonly put on ADD drugs for all kinds of NORMAL boy behavior and this is considered appallingly acceptable by many teachers and doctors.

Do note that THC has passed all of the FDA tests for safety and efficacy, which is why it is sold as a ScheduleIII prescription drug known as ‘Marinol’. (if you’re confused by the word ‘dronabinol’, look up the molecular structure of ‘dronabinol’ and the molecular structure of d9THC and see if you can spot any differences. Dronabinol is just a made up word for THC that came from a beaker instead of a plant.)

If these studies you’ve cited actually carried any weight, then Marinol would have been pulled from distribution.

This Cramer is an idiot who was awake but went back to sleep. Why would anyone capable of independent intelligent thought side with our modern hell-society against the Founding Fathers who grew and smoked hemp.

Hemp was no big deal in the 19th century because it was LEGAL.

Please wake up you jerk. Just wake up. Idiots like you enable organized crime and cause deaths. You must wake up or we will be forced to sweep you aside using any means necessary to regain our freedom from your tyranny.

The founders certainly grew hemp (for rope). I’m not aware of any that smoked marijuana. Of course, they did smoke tobacco. And that was pretty darn dumb.

I love your calm and well reasoned responsive style–it says a lot for what marijuana does for you, doesn’t it?

Schizophrenia is not something you “catch” like the flu and it is a long stretch to think that it can be “caused” by something like marijuana. Almost everyone agrees that there is an inherited predisposition and it is likely that the “better buzz” genes are associated with that.

Actually, recent research on the mutations associated with schizophrenia (and curiously, bipolar disorder as well) show that they are on the major histocompatibility complex region of chromosome 6, which fits well with some of the proposals that suggest a long-term infectious agent plays a part. See International Schizophrenia Consortium, “Common polygenic variation contributes to risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,” /Nature /460[August 6, 2009] 750-1

As the papers that I cite above demonstrate, your claim that “Almost everyone agrees” is simply not true. There may well be scientists that think that, but there are plenty who are persuaded by longitudinal studies that marijuana is one causative factor.

The war against marijuana is ridiculous on its face. Risks are everywhere and unavoidable. Your study simply proves what has been said for a few generations now: Yes there are some ill-effects associated with the drug, but they are few and far between.

So 8% of schizophrenics are there at least in part because of marijuana and that’s “few and far between?” I guess that you don’t put a high premium on sanity.

So, what do we do about it? I say decriminalize it for adults, but make really, really harsh penalties for those who give it to children, especially their parents! We absolutely need to protect our young from the irresponsible adults.

Please explain how you are going to do this, when, as some commenters here have explained, their parents got them started smoking pot. Unfortunately, pot is a religion of sorts.

To put the marijuana causes schizophrenia trope in context, the total incidence of schizophrenia in the US is about 1%.

But until deinstitutionalization, this was the SINGLE largest category of hospital bed use in North America. Not mental hospitals. ALL hospital beds. Why? Because 70% of schizophrenics NEVER recover–and they usually get sick in their teens or early 20s–so they have 50-70 years ahead of them, largely incapable of caring for themselves. That’s a major cost.

#39 JimVT: Assuming you are serious, there are recipes available with a quick google search that will show you how to cook cannabis into butter, and then use that butter to make any sort of food you want, cake, cookies, toast, pasta, and it will get you stoned. Never done it myself, and I hear it’s a different “high” then if you smoke it, and I don’t know if eating it would have the same medical benefits. If you are serious you should look into it.

If 8% of pot smokers develop severe psychosis then what of the other 92%? Do they get off scot free, or do they display dose dependent degrees of sub-clinical psychotic behavior? Perhaps these others are more healthy and well adjusted, and more able to cope with the debilitating effects than the severe cases. And perhaps they fly along fat and happy until one day they snap and do something stupid like that hippie in Austin.

If 8% of a population displays a severe version of a syndrome then it is likely that another 50% displays also it in lesser severity. This might manifest itself in episodes of road rage, spousal abuse, and a tendency to start blogs with the words “green” and “balls”.

I have a 30 year personal experience with a paranoid schizophrenic mother who never smoked pot or drank in excess. It is the saddest most devastating thing imaginable to see a vibrant, beautiful 35 year old mother of four begin to hear voices and spend the last 30 years of her life in various forms of mental health lockdown, electric shock treatment and psychotropic drug overload.

If you want my take on mental health issues we should start at square ONE! The Western Diet slowly destroys every civilization it has been thrust upon. The mass marketing of artificially imitated “food” is killing both our physical and mental health. This is quite possibly the most well documented fact in science today.

Nor did I ever say that marijuana was the ONLY cause, or even the MAJOR cause of schizophrenia. I was quite clear that it was only one cause.

You need to square your claim about food as the cause with the fact that schizophrenia rates have been rising in Western Europe and the U.S. over several centuries–to the point where it appears to be roughly 8x as high as it was in 1600–and in the last couple of decades, it seems to have leveled off. If your hypothesis is correct, then this dramatic increase should have happened almost entirely in the mid to late 20th century. It didn’t.

QUOTE
If anything, instead of decriminalizing marijuana, we should be looking at discouraging alcohol — and recognizing that while Prohibition didn’t work, there may be approaches more educational, and less drastic, that can.
UNQUOTE

Hate to tell you but prohibition of marijuana hasn’t worked either. I’m sure there are many children who would gladly trade a parent in prison for marijuana for taking their chances on some straw grabbing mental illness statistics.

You are an advocate of the nanny state, and personally dangerous to the rest of society who would like to be free of your kind.

The first one is that just as correlation doesn’t allow one to infer causation, neither does temporal succession — in fact, that’s known classically as the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. In this case, when you have a relatively large population — people who have smoked marijuana — with a pretty small subset or people who develop psychosis symptoms, epidemiologically a mere doubling isn’t strong. Add to that the fact that we don’t actually understand the underlying cause of schizophrenia and in fact have good reasons to suspect there may be a collection of different diseases with similar symptoms, there is a real issue with claiming a causal connection at all.

Indeed, it probably is several diseases with similar symptoms. That doesn’t make it any less true that marijuana increases schizophrenia rates, whatever schizophrenia turns out to be.

The second point is that there is a strong familial component to the incidence of schizophrenia and other “mental” illnesses. This indicates an inborn inclination that may (actually, probably does) haev a cluster of subclinical symptoms. This both weakness the case for marijuana being causal, and strengthen the case for the greater marijuana use being self-medication of, for example, greater irritability or excitability.

So because these symptoms are subclinical, there’s no way to prove or disprove a connection. That’s a great way to avoid facing the problem, but it doesn’t solve it.

Now, let’s put those two aside. The third issue is that the incidence of psychosis is small in either the dope-smoking or the non-using population. So, by arguing against legalization, you’re arguing that a large population who aren’t subject to the problem should be proscribed from using marijuana based on the ill effects on a small population. Compare this, for example, with alcohol, sugar, or peanut allergies. Would you say peanuts should be illegal because they cause a few people extreme problems?

If there was no way to identify who at risk, and the very first contact with any peanut product caused lifelong paralysis (a good analogy to lifelong schizophrenia), yes, I would support prohibiting the use of peanuts in any food. Wouldn’t you?

The corruption of our Police, the destruction of our “Narco-Neighbor” States, the Governmental intrusion into our monetary transactions, the incarceration of a large percentage of the black race and the funding of criminal empires, all eerily similar to Prohibition forces me to vote to legalize Drugs.

Yeah, Clayton, and we didn’t know that pain relievers can cause deafness until recently, either. Want to ban Tylenol?

Dan Miller, I’ll sign that waiver for my Belgian ales if you sign it for your Krispy Kremes! And dude, what century are you in-pushers!? It’s everywhere today, and no one is “pushing” anything.

Con, good for you and your kids. I spent time some in college drinking, smoking pot, snorting the occasional line (it really never appealed to me, but it was everywhere in the 70s), smoked opium with my friend at Georgetown (according to him, a lot of diplomats’ kids there bringing stuff into the country under diplomatic immunity), was introduced to nitrous oxide at a friend’s fraternity at Tufts University–and was an academic scholarship student in Boston. All of which, like your screed, proves absolutely nothing.

Anyone negatively commenting on the driving ability of a pot smoker as compared to a drinker has no idea what they’re talking about. Drivers under the influence of cannibis are way more careful (read-paranoid) than those under the influence of alcohol. No crime to speak of, either, unless shoplifting Twinkies is a major offense…

1. You seem to have left most of us unconvinced. Absent psychiatric and brain injury evaluations from an early age of said study participants, most of us will remain so.

2. My girlfriend is a nurse case manager at a teaching hospital in the poorest section of a major city. Over 65% of her patients are Medicaid or “free” care, which mostly means homeless. Most have substance abuse issues. Care to guess what that substance is 80% of the time? And smoking weed didn’t get them started drinking…

3,4. I, for one, AM willing to throw the weak sisters from the lifeboat, and have no compunctions about saying it. In this day and age, we’ve all been educated ad nauseum about the dangers of drugs, and we all have to decide whether or not we’re willing to break the law and abuse our bodies. Heroin addiction is not a sickness, it’s a long-term method of suicide, and I resent the implication that I’m some sort of heartless bastard when I don’t get all weepy about the problems of someone who decides to stick the spike in his arm. There are people that can drink or smoke dope every day and lead a normal life, and there are others who can’t. Life is unfair. That’s the basic problem that the Left has with reality; we’re all the same, so no one can have a genetic or psychological predisposition to addiction.

5. Your cited study admits in the methods section that it didn’t select for the drug of choice other than the one that’s the biggest problem, alcohol. Is this study supposed to prove something about marijuana?

6. My doctor wants me to drink 2 glasses of Zinfandel every day. Who the heck are you to counterdict him?

7. Every desirable activity you make illegal simply empowers the criminal element. It’s impossible for law enforcement to win the War on Drugs. Talk to anyone in the know and you’ll find out that heroin is vastly less expensive today than it was 30 years ago.

“Skunk” is a slang term for any pungent, stinky weed (usually it smells like a skunk, duh). Regardless, it’s slang, and what I call “skunk”, someone else may call “poo”, and someone else may call “china”. The same MSM that gives you these silly anti-pot articles are keeping Obama in power, but I guess they must be correct this time, right?
If you want to get into actual strains that smell like skunk, like the OG kush, as a smoker I would make the argument that it is a better smoke for you, both because of it’s quality there is less stem and leaf and other pollutants in the bud, and because of it’s potency you smoke far, far less of it.

The fact that Marijuana has over 400 chemicals in it means nothing. Most store bought coffee contains over 1000 chemicals, many of which are carcinogens. Arbitrary, meaningless strawmen are a hallmark of prohibitionist arguments.

Take a trip to your local school on opening day and tell me how long the nurse’s line is. Before you know it, the government and people like Clayton, will tell us how much internet usage is acceptable.

” ‘As for the cost to society for treatment, who says we have to pay these costs? There is no such mandate. Let’s see, i keep my nose clean as a kid, while others are lighting up and having a good time. I learn to work and make a living, and they don’t. Eventually, they become dysfunctional, and I’m supposed to pay for them? “But, they are the poor unfortunates!” Um, no. They are not unfortunate. They made that bed themselves. I shall not lie in it with them.’

And you wonder why Obama won? Keep talking like this, and hope it isn’t a relative or friend who makes this mistake.”

Clayton, you seem to be making the argument that if your mother or brother gets ill, I should be forced by the government to pay for her treatment. Do I misunderstand you?

The article talks about smoking large amounts by age 15? There is a call for regulation and taxation, like alcohol. Don’t fall into the trap of “progressive” thinking, it’s the same as alcohol prohibition. Our efforts need to focus on real crime, keep real criminals in our jails.

“You are correct: there haven’t been dozens of random mass murders in schools, malls, universities, etc. over the last two decades where these used to be so rare as to be unknown. No, not at all.”

Clayton, you yourself should know better than anyone that correlation does not equal causation. There is no evidence that the Columbine kids or Cho Seung Hui smoked pot. There’s more evidence to support the theory that Sulejmon Talovic was a jihadist, that Matthew Murray was a repressed young bigot, and that Robert Hawkins a classic, honest-to-goodness loser (though I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a pothead), than to suggest marijuana drove them to it. And if you’re going to talk about shootings, you have to include all the workplace rampages and postal shootings in that same period, and they number in the triple digits. Mental illness may have played a part in the deeds of men like Mark Barton, Gian Ferri, Joseph Wesbrecker, and that fella in Missouri back in January, compounded with whatever real troubles they may have been having. That doesn’t mean their mental illness was caused by pot.

Well, guns cause people to die. I bet at least one out of 50 gun owners is likely to either murder someone, or accidentally shoot someone, or have it stolen by someone who does something bad with it, etc. So let’s ban guns, right?

And to say “it costs the government money” is a non-starter with me. It is a statist argument. Smoking cigarettes costs the taxpayer lots of money too, so let’s ban that. And overeating. Gotta ban the overeating.

War costs the government money too, and people die from that as well. OUR TROOPS die from that. Ban War, right?

Marijuana is something that people shouldn’t use. But government has no right to force any adult not to use it, anymore than they have a right to tell us not to smoke cigarettes, eat too much, swig whisky or own a shotgun.

Plus, let’s go ahead and end the myth that prohibition of marijuana has prevented people from using it anyway. And by keeping it illegal, we give terrorist groups and cartels a means of making money, and gaining influence, on our soil no less.

Sorry, but this article is “new conservatism” (old socialism) and I’ve had enough of that.

And for the record, I don’t smoke marijuana, haven’t done it for years, and never will again.

All of you who want to legalize mj, it makes about as much sense to eliminate speed limits on all roads & highways, repeal all limitations on the manufacture, distribution, sale & consumption of alcohol, ignore the requirement to carry liability insurance, and get rid of many other laws that place limitations on all of us due to the acts of the stupid few. I’m willing to put up with a few inconveniences (like driving slower than I could) in exchange for reasonable assurance there won’t be some stoned-out-of-his/her-mind moron also driving around. I don’t want to have to support the institutionalization of pot heads who turn into schizophrenic, wigged-out, space cadets.
You idiots who want to sit around and do nothing but smoke pot should pack up & go to a place where it’s legal, smoke all you want, and waste away to your heart’s content. Just don’t do it here and then ask me to subsidize the bill you get from your shrink and/or your chemotherapy.

As I see many of you are mentioning statistical research: I have put one of the most comprehensive link lists for hundreds of thousands of statistical sources and indicators on my blog: Statistics Reference List. And what I find most fascinating is how data can be visualised nowadays with the graphical computing power of modern PCs, as in many of the dozens of examples in these Data Visualisation References. If you miss anything that I might be able to find for you or if you yourself want to share a resource, please leave a comment.

So there is a study that says 1-3% of pot smokers are physcotic? I must say, what a skewed interpretation of the survey. Just from living life I have found about 10 percent of the general population is physcotic. If there was a quote that states what the general population results were I missed it. Looks like the herb is beneficial to me. Just looking at those statistics. I highly recommend smoking therapy it reduces your chances of becoming physcotic.

Given Clayton Cramer’s responses, it is reasonable to conclude that he really isn’t a serious thinker, nor a reliable advocate for liberty, and should be actively disconnected from any reputable platform that seeks to advance the cause of freedom.

I am morally opposed to drugs, including pot. I have first hand experience from my wasted youth what it can do to you. However, if we have a moral and legal right to our own bodies, doesn’t that mean we are free to poison them if we choose? I also think the consequences of the drug war are a case of “the cure is worse than the disease” syndrome. Putting pothead losers in jail is going to subject them to an element that will further degrade their sense of moral ethics. It is almost like a “Sophie’s Choice” kinda of thing. Both alternatives suck. Dope heads are not going to reform because of laws, so we have to endure the seamy side of society. But they will be conditioned to become hardened criminals if we subject them to this element in prison.

The biggest problem with the ‘War on Pot’ is that millions of Americans have smoked it and consider it relatively or not at all harmless, and therefore the laws are stupid. That carries over and makes people think the law of the land is stupid. This leads to anarchy. How many people now don’t care if they run stop signs, take things that don’t belong to them, fondle children, commit hits and runs, be involved in violence, and on and on? There is a general malaise that laws are stupid and not to be followed. You can put much of this pervasive attitude on the shoulders of draconian and unenforceable pot laws.

Not wearing one’s seat belt should not be a punishable offense for solo drivers. However, failing to wear a seat belt in a car with other passengers in it makes you a threat to them. If an accident were to occur and you were not wearing a seat belt, you could easily become a projectile that could seriously injure or kill other passengers who have buckled up.

Mr. Cramer, per your post 91
Of course laws influence behavior. You claim that keeping pot illegal keeps the price high and discourages buyers. That is complete nonsense. People may simply decide to steal money to buy drugs. Then you have drug use and theft. Women may decide to prostitute themselves, to pay for their drugs. Now you have drug use and prostitution. In addition, drug lords must thank God every day for the drug laws that keep out competition and keep their business wildly profitable. Of course with all that money comes turf wars and gangland slayings and cop killings and etc. and etc.(Just like alcohol probition) The whole point of all this is that it is fruitless to tout the ‘noble fight’ to ‘keep our kids off drugs’, when the severe downsides to a policy of probition are not scrutinized in all their ugly spectacle. Do you honestly prefer the status quo, namely, to continue to fight an endless and destructive ‘war on drugs’ theoretically -forever? I asked the question, and perhaps you can answer me: “What is our exit strategy from the war on drugs?” The drug war has been going on since Nixon was president, and at the cost of billions of dollars every year, and has nothing to show for it. Ultimately, prohibition will fail. If you support drug prohibition, that is fine, but just know that you are supporting a failed idea that will never succeed.
Only legalization, regulation and taxation makes sense. Probition is a utopian fantasy, that will never accomplish its purported ends.

High school was the only time I knew large groups of people who either smoked pot or didn’t – there was a very clear demarcation between potheads and non potheads. It was a natural experiment. The people who smoked pot were poor students, not involved in extra curricular activities, low achievers, and hung out in the parking lot with other dopers as soon and as often as they could. The people who drank once in a while (like on some weekends) were athletes, average to good students, involved in activities and sociable. That’s all I needed to experience to know to stay away from pot.

I quit “doing the doob” 32 years ago. I had one very young son, another on the way, and my “tude” was–I didn’t need local donut professionals crashing the apartment over half an ounce.

But Cramer seems to be a cut from the old cloth–a prohibitionist hiding behind political rhetoric and financial scientific-ism . . . i.e.–”here is the cost to society because you’re breathing.”

Bull-hockey. Government studies (mutually exclusive terms), always find in favor of government policy. It is an unwritten given, so when someone wishing to parrot their agreement with government quotes statistics, said statistics always favor government. Gee . . . ya think?

Big surprise.

I am still “doob-free.” But there is nothing American about myself that says I should be telling my neighbor he or she cannot do the herb of their choice. And if they do, they are least likely to be committing mayhem upon the community.

Cramer found himself lacking a subject for a column, and happened upon “Gee, let’s nail potheads.” But . . .

Do it intellectually. Yeah . . .

My dog dumps intellectually, because he is my dog and I have several degrees . . . but his dump still smells.

Someone on this thread has a mental problem. I see a few posters other than you that fit this bill, but I think you are the one with the biggest of the problems. Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Alarmists level problem I think. Someone has drank some Kool-Aid from a ‘scientific’ study and has had a born again experience.

I have never used an illegal drug in my entire life, with a potential exception of one time in which I think a drink of mine at a bar may have been spiked with something. I have never sold drugs in my life. I pretty much never sell anything, I even give my old cars away because the process of selling is stressful for me.

With that disclaimer, I will say that the federal government has no standing in making marijuana illegal based on the Constitution. While you may wish no one to use it because you have bad experiences, tough luck, life is not fair, and those who chose to use drugs have that responsibility, not the rest of society.

You make the statement that if the government does not take care of these people, that it falls on the charities. Who do you think is going to help these people more, the federal government or a charitable organization, probably one that would be run by someone with your bad experiences? You see, my family likely has many members who are self destructive, want to know how much I care about their health? I do not, the reason being is that Uncle Sam is stealing money from my hard work and transferring to their good for nothing grubby hands. If there was not pot, crack or some other illegal drug, they always had some cocktail that was cooked up that they were sniffing, drinking or smoking. Every single one of the alternatives they went for was more damaging to their brain and body than marijuana would have been.

People have written above about how these potheads are violent. The only time potheads are violent is when they cannot get their drugs. The likely reason is because the drug prices are so high because of the fact it is illegal. Then they go on crime sprees to steal the funds in order to feed the habit. Some drunks do the very same thing. Smokers get very irritable when they do not have their nicotine fix. I get extremely irritable when I have had a migraine headache for two or three days and because the federal government likes to intrude into my private life I do not have enough pain medication to dull it down to only making it hard to smile.

Like I said before, it is your opinion, you are welcome to it. Glad you got a side to be on, but it is not a conservative side and you have been making very many half truths in your argument.

Have those of you who advocate legalization ever really, truly, thought this through? Let me point some things out to you.

Marijuana is harmful. I’ve been a high school teacher for many years, and I’ve seen first-hand a whole lot of melted brains. And modern marijuana is a carefully cultivated and vastly improved hybrid from whatever it was that happy old hippies smoked in days of yore.

But let me get to the point for you. If marijuana is legalized, the following will happen:

1. Usage will increase dramatically among the young. Illegality is actually a major disincentive for people to use.

2. The criminal gangs will be given cover within our own institutions of government. The illegal market would continue to exist, while the legal market would provide cover (and great opportunities for infiltration, bribery, and corruption)for the drug cartels within the new legitimate drug economy.

What, did you think that the cartels were just going to go away once their product was legal? As long as we maintained any standards and restrictions on who could use the stuff, the nasty work of stamping them out would still go on. Only this time, they could hide within the system.

Your last sentence is the most important in my opinion. Alcohol is the single biggest problem in this country. Violence, domestic disturbances, accidents, etc. Alcohol affects everyone’s daily life much more than people realize. I don’t believe prohibition is the answer, but I definitely believe alcohol shouldn’t be advertised on television (much like the ban for tobacco companies) or glorified as it is in the advertising that is allowed.

I think if we were to look at the entire spectrum of the problems alcohol brings, it’s costs far outweigh the costs (or burden) of tobacco problems. (Think of all the DUI’s in this country, think of all the barroom fights, domestic disturbances in homes, etc. Go into any police station and ask how often alcohol is involved in their interactions with the public and I think the average person would be shocked at what a large percentage it is)

Yes, something needs to be done about the alcohol problem in this country before we start worrying about marijuana. After all, alcohol is the true “gateway drug”.

I’m a 45 year old and I smoke reefer. I’ve smoked it since I’ve been 15, and most of the people I have hung out with have been smokers. Here’s what I can tell you honestly about the cost of my habit. It saps ambition. For every smoker who claims that it doesn’t, and lists achievements and lifestyles that “prove” no ill effects, I can show you ten that are apathetic, and have lowered their expectations about life and what they can achieve. Weed IS a gateway drug. Most of the folks I know who use it also use or have used hard drugs–they started with reefer. It makes you do things when you’re high, that you wouldn’t do straight. I know many women who have had experiences they’re sorry about afterwards when they smoke, and men too! Driving while high is as dangerous as driving drunk. I’ve seen many high accidents. Since it’s illegal, it’s dangerous to buy it from someone you don’t know. Drug dealers are greedy, violent and untrustable. I’ve been robbed even by people I know, and assaulted once by someone I didn’t. It causes depression, I know more than a few users that have experienced profound personality changes after years of use. Say what you will, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. No pro-pot propaganda you can say will ever change the truth. I know people that have lost jobs from smoking reefer, lost their marriage, messed up the lives of their kids…It causes severe respiratory problems because you smoke it. Bronchitis, Pneumonia, infectionss etc.,etc. All in all I still smoke, because I like the way it feels and I’ve been smoking so long that I get very irritable and confused without it. I also get headaches and paranoid/anti-social if I go without. It’s not addictive on the level of heroin or pills, but it definetly has withdrawal properties that are uncomfortable–so it’s hard to quit. I probably won’t quit, because I grew up with a lax attitude toward drugs and it’s a big part of my life now, but if I had it to do over, I probably wouldn’t start smoking it. The people that I know who are not smokers are generally more active and healthy, more successful and more happy than most of my pot smoking friends. So I would say it would probably be a bad thing to make legal.

Yes, this is a good argument against socialized medicine. If you must pay for marijuana-related health problems, tax it (like cigarettes). Make it illegal for the under-18 crowd. Current illegality is actually NOT a major disincentive for people to use. It was really easy to find at my high school 20-years ago and MUCH easier to get than beer.

Lots of things are dangerous in this life and we let people do them. There were nearly 6,420,000 auto accidents in the United States in 2005. The financial cost of these crashes is more than 230 Billion dollars. If everyone just took public transportation this would be reduced to almost nothing. Should I (since I don’t own a car) resent my health costs being higher because people risk their lives and the lives of others behind the wheel? Driving only for pleasure and “convenience”.

Of course drugs should be legalized and non-violent offenders should be let free tomorrow. Legal things are easier to regulate, end of story.

I don’t care about the consequences for people who choose to use dangerous substances for recreation. I care about the the societal costs inflicted on the rest of us as a direct result of the war on drugs. A war that has been going on in some form or another for about 100 years with no positive results. As with alcohol prohibition, the main result of that war is to increase governmental power and reduce my civil rights and fund vast criminal enterprises. Since after all our efforts, any person can any drug anywhere at any time, what is the point?

All I can say is that I may have a social responsibility to advise my fellow citizen when I see one behaving in a self-destructive manner and there’s a chance the advice will be taken. I do not have the right to intrude in that fellow citizen’s life to prevent or prohibit the self-destructive act.

I believe you, and I, have the right to be stupid, be self-destructive, or anything else that makes no sense. You also have the responsibility to clean up after your own messes.

We’re all supposed to be adults by the age of 21. But sadly it seems I see real adults are a minority even at retirement age. Thanks to them I do not have adequate resources for my own retirement. It was all taxed away to pay others to help them recover from their own idiot behavior or try to prevent it.

The government MUST get OUT of our lives and stop both trying to prevent mistakes and picking up the pieces after a mistake. Done that way one idiot starves for his own mistakes and he has no friends to help. The other way we’re all going broke at once. Soon only our Government elective officials, appointive officials and employees will have the money to live on as they take it away from us peons as soon as we earn it.

If we were a nanny government or should be a nanny government preventing the sale, distribution, or use of marijuana makes sense. We’re not and should not be. So the prevention makes no sense at all.

Clayton, all I can presume is that you think the government should be a nanny government. I beg of you to get off that train. It’s on the wrong, the losing, track.

There are more than mere treatment costs involved here. If I were to market a product that could be said to reliably cause a small percentage of the least productive people in the country to become dangerous physically to those around them, as many schizophrenics are, it would be justifiably banned. The cost here is the risk to the lives and property of the citizenry; allowing me to market my product would impose a “tax” on the victims of some of my customers even if the state did nothing to help them.

So IF use of pot causes a significant increase in risk of schizophrenia, keeping it’s use illegal MAY be justified.
While correlation does not prove causation, it can, if not otherwise explained, be an indicator that causation exists. I am looking over some of these studies to see if an other explanation fits, but this layman hasn’t found one yet.

I have a question for Mr. Cramer. Rasmussen Reports has the marijuana legalization initiative ahead in CA.* If the measure passes, will you support CA’s prerogative under the Tenth Amendment to carry out such a program without federal interference?

*From May 2009¹ to Nov. 2009², support has risen from 45% to 47% to 49%, while opposition has declined from 46% to 42% to 38%:

Have those of you who advocate legalization ever really, truly, thought this through? Let me point some things out to you.

Marijuana is harmful.

Yep. And legal alcohol is harder for the youth to get. So if you are really worried about the youth (I don’t believe that for even a picosecond) legalization with age restrictions is the way to go.

BTW water is harmful. You get enough in your lungs for long enough and breathing becomes difficult. And it is possible to drink enough so that you can die from the electrolyte imbalances too much water causes.

So are you monitoring your kids at the water fountain? How can you even allow such a dangerous substance in schools?

2. The criminal gangs will be given cover within our own institutions of government. The illegal market would continue to exist, while the legal market would provide cover (and great opportunities for infiltration, bribery, and corruption)for the drug cartels within the new legitimate drug economy.

And you claim to be a teacher? Criminal gangs profit from risk arbitrage: “we take the risk of growing and distributing it, you only take the risk of an occasional buy”.

Now where is the risk arbitrage in pot that costs $1 a lb vs $40 for 1/8th of an ounce? i.e the risk factor is 127 times the cost of the goods.

Alcohol gangs were destroyed when their risk arbitrage was eliminated. It is true of ALL black market operations.

Of course there will be a hangover. The gangs will initially go into other lines of work like murder for hire (see Murder Inc.) and kidnapping. But after 20 or 40 years that dies out too.

So teacher, have you ever studied the history of alcohol prohibition and its aftermath?

All of you who want to legalize mj, it makes about as much sense to eliminate speed limits on all roads & highways, repeal all limitations on the manufacture, distribution, sale & consumption of alcohol,…

I have some very bad news for you. There are currently no limitations on the manufacture, distribution, sale & consumption of marijuana. Kids can get pot easier than they can get a beer.

Clayton, I have to ask you what substance you used to stay up all night and add all those responses? I’d outlaw whatever it is!
Everyone seems to want to stop “the children” from using cannabis by preventing adults from having the choice. See the other article on childrens’ and adults’ rights and get back to us.

Cramer excerpt: “If anything, instead of decriminalizing marijuana, we should be looking at discouraging alcohol — and recognizing that while Prohibition didn’t work, there may be approaches more educational, and less drastic, that can.”

So what’s wrong with using ‘more educational, less drastic approaches’ towards marijuana rather than continuing to support This prohibition that can never work?

I think you’ll find there are other ‘psychotic dangers’ in many things, from booze to various prescription drugs.

Hmmmm….I wonder how much the American taxpayer pays for the effects of sexual promiscuity. A HELL of a lot more than smoking pot, by golly! And…just what price does society pay for the continued legalized use of alcohol…in both money, physical injury, and shattered lives?

Any chance you could do a piece on how MMR vaccine causes autism next? I mean, if a heavily slanted study is published in a premier medical journal, who cares if their experimental methods are shoddy? As long as their conclusions match mine, I don’t care if people die as the result of poor science, eh, Mr. Cramer?

Every year far too many innocent people die because we give dimwitted thugs a path to fortune that even a retard could follow, and they subsequently use their drug riches to buy assault rifles and defend territory. What a great outcome!

You can use the same reasoning to conclude aspirin use causes headaches or that psychiatrist-prescribed medication produces mental illness. The sibling study isn’t very persuasive; there’s still an obvious problem of self-selection (i.e., a sibling that has a mental disorder is also more likely to choose to smoke). If you really wanted a control group you would need to find people who have no access to marijuana (good luck) AND make absolutely sure there are no contributing effects from cigarettes, alcohol, heroin, cocaine, PCP, meth, ecstasy or other substances, any of which the marijuana might also be using and all of which are already known to be more harmful than marijuana.

People who have mental disorders disproportionately develop drug habits, legal and otherwise, nearly all of them more dangerous than marijuana. This is just government trying to justify an intrusion on our freedom, one that employs millions of gov’t worker bees at taxpayer expense.

End the demented new prohibition, help construct better safer drug policies
for society and the individual. Take morally bankrupt profiteers, servants
of tyranny, gun control fanatics and racists a step closer to being
politically dead bodies.

The government is best left out of our personal moral dilemmas. They are
needed to protect us from fraud and violence. At present they are too busy
trying to be our moral police instead of our safety police. Get tough on
violent crime!

The tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceuticals gangs deal drugs causing more death annually than all illicit drugs. We tolerate their salesmen! The family is far superior to the state as a means of moral development and social control.

Stop prohibition triggered violence, official lawlessness, racism, tyranny
and ruined lives! Murderers and other violent predators roam free, while we
police nonviolent adult social, medicinal and religious drug use. Limited
resources can be better-spent catching pedophiles, rapists and killers. More time could go toward stopping DUI and those selling drugs to minors. Dare to spend some of the estimated $50 to $70 billion (per year local/state/federal budget) toward true education.

I have a question for Mr. Cramer. Rasmussen Reports has the marijuana legalization initiative ahead in CA.* If the measure passes, will you support CA’s prerogative under the Tenth Amendment to carry out such a program without federal interference?

Of course. The legal question is separate from the public policy question–and the federal government’s authority to regulate marijuana is a lot more limited than the current law.

I actually voted for the medical marijuana initiative when I lived in California. In retrospect, I regret that decision. My daughter tells me that among her peers, this was widely interpreted as “marijuana is okay, no reason not to smoke it.”

Bad stuff happens. The original no no on Herb began in Texas, USA. It was a racist law written especially sinful towards Latinos. They were trying to make more money in the US than they could in Mexico with brick weed. Cheap really harsh, and not very good not very good herb.

The Hearst Publishing empire, Big Pharma, Big Oil types, got together, with Big Banking families and cooked of a scheme with the Head of the DEA, before it was called DEA. The scheme, this time it was again racist in nature; only this time the African Americans, Filipinos, Cuban, the peoples of and the Island Nations just south of FL, again USA; were the victims of this Racism-that is pure, real, and TRUE!

In Senate and House hearings under oath and sworn testimony it was said again under oath, that the Herb caused White Women to have Affairs and Fornications with Musicians,and Entertainers of the cultures, and Nations noted above. It was this testimony that was the Thesis for the no-no on the Herb.

The AMA, the Medical types were against this, they knew from ducumented case histories, the Herb wisely used under a Medical Supervised professional can Heal, and in some cases provides a real Medical cure. I am one for the Healing, and the Spiritual aspect of the Herb. Like a Lover, Ganj can be a very Special friend, but as anyone can validate from experience, when it gets bad it is living Hell on Earth.

Moderation is the Key to any thing we as mere Mortals do, experience, trust, and occupy our selves with. I often have heard What Ever Ones Does, what ever You Spend the most amount of time, doing, and concentrate upon-It IS-That, Which One WORSHIPS! Be it money, work, sex, TV, Internet, Alcohol, Drugs, or whatver. Some worship Alkies, Druggies, Plastic/Wooden/Metal Idols, and alot of other stuff. Does it all begin as a Choice, sure. It can become anyones Master/Lord/Comforter/Lover/ Demon.

Some people are not as strong as others. Some have a predisposition to stuff. Some have Alergies, some have Hang ups, even a destructive attitude and worse desrtuctive behaviors.

Are these learned, are they some sort of Baggage, that they carry around like a Badge of Honor, or a case of Weak Ego, or worse utilize Propaganda Techinques to try to get you to buy-in, consume, believe=in,Self Worth issues, maybe just bullies. It is all the same? Is not the problem, it is the same. Restrict, Regulate, and Control. Yes, control..of you, me, them, her, him-all of us!

If I can Direct, and Re-Direct you behavior, your conduct, and If Iam Very good possibly modify your thinking..that is really just bad management, bad policy, bad very bad, for the Land of the Free. Is it any wonder Americans are labeled as Anarchists, the Great Satan, Emperialist, Infidels, and Much worse.

We have not been a the Land of the Free for many generations. What happend to the Land of the Free? We still have the people who still Pre-Judge. They still think of others, as just that, Other.

We have become the Land of the: I, Me, Mine, and My. Where and when did we loose the: We, us, our, you, and Yours?

I am not holding hands and singing around the camp fires- it might not hurt. But just as soon as I did, there is a frown of Officer Friendly with his/her guns, sprays, and sticks-of harm and destruction. Where is your permit, do you have a license for hand holding in the County, issued by the City, and counter signed by the “State”?

Sure my Hash doesn’t have any Corned Beef, or Roast Beast in it. But I didn’t shed blood to have my Hash. Ganj-It is a Flower! It is a Plant-period! Do you let your Young trample over, or around your Garden/s? Yes I cultivate, and sing aloud to my “Babies” I have to grow. I have Pain Issues, personality Issues, and Severe Medical Issues-but I own them-for better or worse, good or bad they are mine. It is very personal, but I can share, I do often. Share, not force,not corrupt-it is a choice, to help others in need of real Help.

When one does edibles, they have to be cautious. It acts in a way that can only be described as more intense. When one can not sleep due to pain, they need relief. When one has no ability to keep down food off any sort, they need relief. Big Pharma is the real, true Drug Pushers. They know that junk is toxic. Who often has heard the provider has to weigh the consequences of the drug, againt the benifit or gain of the Drug? Is not that why it is a prescription. Poision, Toxic, do not stop taking with out consulting with your Provider.

AS the plant grows, it produces these crystal looking and feeling substances calle trichromes. This is the Cats meow. This is where the THC is. On a well cared for plant the chromes look like a heavy dusting of fine granulated sugar, only really finely, small sized sugar. You have to cut the plant down, dry it, and cure it. No one can smoke the flowers while they are freshly cut and get High or Stoned. High and Stoned are not the same. High is Up, Stoned is down.

From seed to smoke takes months. Hash is the chromes after the cure, processed to relieve the plant material of the chromes. These chromes are pressed and heated. A normal hair dryer can be used to heat. Then this warmed crystal stuff is then compressed, then shaped. By now it is ready, be it smoke, or what ever-now it is Hash.Very intense. Water hash, some call it Waterworks, is after the cure, cold water is the medium, and agitation usually mechanical, but can be manual. This washing machine effect dislodges the chromes from the plant material. Water hash has to be dried, then heated and compressed.

Very intense, strong, and wonderful smell. A little goes a lon way.

This so called stronger Skunk weed, is pure propaganda. The stuff in the 60′s, 70′s, and 80′s was many times stronger. The gene pool has been over worked so much that the New Super Strains, are for the most part Mutant Strains. The gene pool is clogged.

The Seed Banks hire staffs to comb the world, for what are called Landrace Pheno types. These are the original pure Pheno’s that have not be corrupted by the cross breeding and IHL’s which are Inbred Lines. Hidden in valleys, on mountain tops, in country sides off the beaten path, awaiting discovery. There is a real threat of loosing some Pheno types. So much so that there is a big campaingn to get people interested in seed collecting. No planting, collect, and save for future genrfeations.

It is a plant, a weed really, grown in every country of the world, no Nation is Ganj free-NONE !

Do you read and study a Bible? All of them all, of them have references to Ganj, called by other names, both Old and New Testament. The Spice Road, Silk Road, and many, many Religions have used the Herb, just called by a different name.

It is guessed that originated in the countries that end in stan.

Your Higher Power what ever you call Him/Her/Them, Loves You, and Yours. We need to Love One another, all the Time, EVERY DAY.

Any chance you could do a piece on how MMR vaccine causes autism next? I mean, if a heavily slanted study is published in a premier medical journal, who cares if their experimental methods are shoddy?

Your evidence that the numerous studies are shoddy or slanted is….?

Note that the Lancet reversed its longstanding editorial position in favor of decriminalization because so many studies were popping up that showed that there was indeed a causal connection. When even the very liberal medical establishment starts to be concerned–doesn’t that make you wonder?

For all of you arguing for legalization: is your view the same for meth? If not, why?

Yep. And legal alcohol is harder for the youth to get. So if you are really worried about the youth (I don’t believe that for even a picosecond) legalization with age restrictions is the way to go.

Alcohol is not harder for youth to get. They are both pretty easy, because so many homes have gobs of both. When I lived in California, I talked to a woman who was treating second graders with pot addictions–they were raiding Mom’s stash.

BTW water is harmful. You get enough in your lungs for long enough and breathing becomes difficult. And it is possible to drink enough so that you can die from the electrolyte imbalances too much water causes.

So are you monitoring your kids at the water fountain? How can you even allow such a dangerous substance in schools?

In case you haven’t noticed, water is necessary for life (unlike pot). There is no evidence that water causes mental illness. And yes, in many places, there are laws requiring fences around pools.

Everyone seems to want to stop “the children” from using cannabis by preventing adults from having the choice. See the other article on childrens’ and adults’ rights and get back to us.

The difficulty here is demonstrated by the potheads’ outraged responses. Pretty clearly, large numbers of potheads refuse to acknowledge that there are some significant risks. Some commenters have told of their parents introducing them to pot. Where I lived in California, many of my daughter’s peers were given pot in junior high by their parents. Why? Because marijuana seems to be a religion to some.

Well M. Simon, it is interesting that you have to question my motives just to make an ideological point about marijuana legalization. If your argument were so strong, you wouldn’t need the insults.

As the sincerity of my concern for youth is in doubt to you, I can tell you this: I taught for a time on a small high school on an American Indian Reservation, and lost five students in only three years to drunk driving. So I think I have a leg to stand on when I claim some interest and compassion on this. I therefore have little sympathy for alcohol use, either. That experience did, in any case, give me great reasons to ponder the limitations and failings of prohibition.

But I do have a job, and therefore limited time to address this fully. I’m certainly not going to devote great energy in debating an analogy as lazy as comparing marijuana to the dangers of drinking fountains. Rather, I’ll leave you to an excellent essay by George Will, who really does know how to make a logical argument.

Hate to tell you but prohibition of marijuana hasn’t worked either. I’m sure there are many children who would gladly trade a parent in prison for marijuana for taking their chances on some straw grabbing mental illness statistics.

How many people are in prison for marijuana possession? Not very many. And these aren’t “straw grabbing”: these are genuine problems of people whose mental illness is a lifelong disability.

You are an advocate of the nanny state, and personally dangerous to the rest of society who would like to be free of your kind.

“The rest of society”: you realize that the vast majority of Americans support “the nanny state”?

frankly i am sick of the nanny state . personally i want to see pot legalized, but im coming from a medical stand point here. i suffer from Degenerative disc disease as well as fibromyalgia and “multiple” arthrologies. for me pain is an ever present constant part of my life it prevents me from working it causes difficulty in performing normal every day tasks , and yet because of other peoples addictions to pills i have a hard time getting enough pain management meds from my dr to keep me at a functioning level. and i know from experience that when the pain gets so bad i cant get out of bed and the pills i do get from the dr arent working i can smoke a bowl and after a few minutes i can get up and get on with my day and even manage to do some laundry … dont lie to yourselves and others by stating there are NO benefits to smoking weed. i support legalization for medicinal purposes .. and i have justifiable cause .

“I would concede that point, except that as of 2002, schizophrenia alone of the mental disorders was costing the United States $63 billion a year in medical costs and in disability payments. Much of that cost is directly governmental, since schizophrenics usually aren’t able to work and thus are reliant on the government.”

–
So the solution is easy. Don’t pay for it.

Illegalizing or legalizing drugs shouldn’t be a question of what’s convenient for the police & courts, or defraying expenses that are taken on by do-gooders in govt. If the argument to decriminalize is that it’s easier for cops, let’s do away with the 4th & 5th Amendments. If the argument is to save money for health care, then let’s ban cars.

Yes, it’s hyperbole, but the issue should be taken with regards to the Constitution, not with regards to what’s cheaper/more convenient. If people who smoke pot find their health insurers won’t cover them (having worked at a drug testing lab for an insurance company, I can’t tell you the number of samples processed that said things like “ate 20 poppyseed muffins this morning”). They’ll be denied life insurance, health insurance, even car insurance, etc., unless they pay higher premiums – or reduce or stop their smoking. It’s a cost of living that they can put on themselves.

If the govt. didn’t put its nose into it other than to enforce contracts and deal with actual crime, it wouldn’t be an issue.

Never smoked pot myself, never want to. It’s nasty stuff, and so are stoners, but if they do it to themselves and I don’t have to pay for it – and they pay the costs of their own choices – I don’t really care. I don’t see how anyone else would, either. (I suppose if it’s your friend or relative you try and stop them/sway them, but it’s still their decision to mess up their life.)

I’m not sure what the solution is as I’m usually pretty libertarian about to each their own, but if my personal experience is any indicator 35 years after the fact, I’ll agree with Clayton.

To a person, everyone of my “doper” friends, more than just the occasional weekend weed warrior while growing up, has experienced some struggle with function. Then there are those who never grew up and are still imbibing, and there is nothing more pathetic than some 50 year old walking around smelling like dope, with his mouth hanging over a bong. They look as pathetic as a strung out junkie, babbling incoherently.

I don’t need academic studies to know that THC is a powerful hallucinogen, and you can’t continue to introduce it to the body without brain chemistry changes, not to mention I cringe to think what long-term use is doing to the pulmonary function.

“I wonder how much the American taxpayer pays for the effects of sexual promiscuity.”

Good point. Ignoring all the other problems promiscuity causes or is associated with, just think of all the money spent on AIDS research. Ban promiscuity, and that will fix the problem. Just throw everyone who engages in sex outside of marriage in jail, and poof, no more AIDS.

I think there are two sides. Yes, the answer is to dismantle the nanny state. However, if we legalize pot, what is the probability that dismantling the nanny state soon follows? Zero. This is where the theory of liberty meets the practicalities of real-life politics. The welfare state is going nowhere. Given that, do you want to be paying for schizo potheads later in life? End the welfare state first, then we can decriminalize pot.

I haven’t even seen a joint for over 30 years, but I favor complete legalization of every drug. The issue is simple: do you or do you not have the freedom to do with your body what you wish, provided you don’t violate the rights of others.

That the State continues to steal citizens’ money for the purpose of caring for schizophrenics and others is irrelevant to that issue. A consistent principled stand in favor of liberty requires that you argue against that, not add to the problem by encouraging continued State control.

“08. Clayton E. Cramer:

To put the marijuana causes schizophrenia trope in context, the total incidence of schizophrenia in the US is about 1%.

But until deinstitutionalization, this was the SINGLE largest category of hospital bed use in North America. Not mental hospitals. ALL hospital beds. Why? Because 70% of schizophrenics NEVER recover–and they usually get sick in their teens or early 20s–so they have 50-70 years ahead of them, largely incapable of caring for themselves. That’s a major cost.
Mar 3, 2010 – 7:40 pm”

That’s an excellent reason that individuals should seriously consider accepting reality and argue for a totally private approach to the problem. Such individuals would have to rely on charity or be euthanized. Their infirmity causes them to lack the rights of healthy individuals (and yes, I recognize there is a tricky moral gray area).

The basic principle there is that no one is morally obligated to provide them with what is in fact a mere vegetable survival, and certainly no one has any business coercing their fellow citizens by using the government as proxy.

Your article is chock full of pragmatic, utilitarian arguments when what it needs is to recognize the basic moral issues at stake that would inform a principled political stand.

For example, arguing that someone’s child may be influenced to smoke marijuana by virtue of its being legalized represents a failure of proper parenting. Encouraging the State to make up the defect is to (inadvertently, no doubt) advocate a principle that leads to the totalitarian Nanny State. See the UK, Sweden, and others for examples. (Recently, Peru passed a law that forbids parents to give children certain ‘harmful’ names. Germany and Sweden outlawed homeschooling.) Once established, you have no argument against those who justify their every new regulation by the argument “it’s for the good of society.”

The legalization/non legalization thing, to me, doesn’t seem very important (ack, here come the objections…:) )

Everybody and their dog is smoking pot these days, it seems to be very widely obtainable.

I likely have some high genetic susceptibility to THC/cannabis, since anytime I smoked in college, I entered a completely different, albeit fascinating, mental realm.

I would never want anyone to be stoned & drive, ’cause, in my experience, the asphalt turns into rolling waves, like the ocean. Very bad for other drivers on the road and other living thing.

Since medical pot has become “legal” in CA, exploitation of this situation has become explosive.

One of my fav thinkers, Aldous Huxley, was a great experimenter with psychotropics. I wish that our population were intelligent enough to “use” psychotropics in the same way that, I like to idealize, certain Native Americans use/used peyote in ceremonies. Or perhaps how some south americans chew coco leaves. Exploration, connectedness.

For habitual, ifelong smokers I’ve known, I wouldn’t say that any of their lives have been enhanced by their pot use.

Charles Martin @ #84 is close to spot-on (should have couched his opposition to Mr. Cramer in cost/benefit terms).

Mr. Cramer, your opposition to legalizing cannabis use is essential an argument of cost. OK. Then fill in the following blanks and tell me if the cost of criminalization outweighs the cost of legalization:

A: Incremental cost of medical facilities due to increased cannabis use following legalization: ____________; (take into account that a certain percentage of users would have used the medical facilities even without having used cannabis, and take into account that a certain percentage would have used the facilities even with cannabis being illegal);

B: Incremental cost of additional police facilities because of crime caused by cannabis being illegal: ___________; (take into account that some portion of cannabis users would have committed crimes in any event and subtract incremental cost of crime from cannabis being legal);

C: Incremental cost of additional prosecutorial facilities for trials of cannabis users because it is illegal ___________;(sames rules as B);

E: Incremental cost of lost output because users/dealers are incarcerated_________;(same rules as B, but note, should be corrected for lost output if cannabis is legal; lost output would include those hospitalized or unable to work because of legal cannabis use — of course, must correct for those who would have used it anyway );

Mr. Cramer, when you have filled in the blanks and toted up the costs of criminalization vs. legalization, then inform us of the outcome. Until then, your argument based simply on a very small fraction of the cost of schiziophrenia remains unconvincing.

I have never met a regular pot smoker who didn’t lie to themselves about the short and long term effects of the drug on their mind.

That said, I’m fine with legalizing it, provided, as Josh S. points out, that we do not allows the users to jump on the welfare bandwagon when the consequences of use ruin their lives.

Also, I want a reliable and straightforward way to test users when they drive; I want people who want to have a bong hit before work to be tested, arrested, and sentenced to the same consequences as drunk drivers. Now that would bring in real revenue to the states. But until that test is viable, I do not support legalization.

Even assuming that Pot is as bad as these studies claim it to be, the social costs of preventing Pot usage are far more than dealing with the effects (ie treating more people for psycholocigal issues from Pot smoking). That is, wouldn’t the BILLIONS of $’s spent every year to combat Pot smoking (including the cost of incarcerating wholly innocent casual users) be better spent on dealing with the supposed drawbacks from legalization?

I don’t use marijuana and I don’t agree with this assessment at all. You can make the old external costs argument any way you want according to your needs. Ban this, ban that, and ban the other thing. Enough with the bans. Ban the banners.

Thank you Mr Cramer for this terrific article.
I live in Sweden where we had a quite restrictive drug policy the last 20 years or so. That means that “only” 5-6 % of young people have tried marijuana or cannabis. But it is still our biggest drug problem. More than half of the “heavy” drug abusers (around 8000-10000 people) use cannabis as their main drug.
We can see a very close connection to other drug abuse. That means that almost everyone amphetamine and heroin abusers started with cannabis.
In Sweden we also find that a lot of suicides is done after abuse of cannabis.
Prof Jovan Rajs find that a lot of the people who had killed their kids (often babies) and other terrible aggressive crimes against was related to cannabis use.
Something that is important to tell young people is that marijuana is making people unreceptive. What about work in school, political duties or the common work for family and society? Perhaps that will be a reason for business communities and families to fight marijuana in future!?
What sort of society do you want? Stoned people like zombies that are high and that you do not can trust because of irrational behavior – Drugs makes people foolish and crazy.
A democratic society and a drug free society is something to work for.
USA and Sweden are near connected in fight against drugs – we love you!
Ake, Stockholm, Sweden

Neighbors …. sounds like he was for it before he was agin’ it. Just like that other loser.

For the record… any scientist that has any knowledge of human behavior will agree that aversion therapy doesn’t work. Any historian will agree that making something that can be consumed illegal doesn’t work. So let’s do what a democracy does. We educate and leave the choice to the individual. Then if it doesn’t work …. condemn them to a life of too high taxes, too high unemployment, too high crime, unions running education into the ground ….. oops….. I think I just described the democrat solution for the future of our country.

I found it difficult to get past the first paragraph. Why did you feel the need to start out by trying to discredit anyone who is going to read your article with a skeptical eye? People for decrim are scientists, doctors, lawyers, successful business people, both marijuana users and non marijuana users.
What are you trying to prove with that little anecdote?

If somebody take a knife and put it through his/her heart, then he/she is gonna die.That’s not a correlation, it’s Causality: Everytime the time anybody is putting a knife through the heart, is everytime somebody is going to die.

Will really you ban the knives? Will you put a tax on every family using knives (in the kitchen, they have lots of those horribly murderous knives! Oh no!). Horribly murderous knives are used everyday for robberies, murdering, raping, etc. Stop the bloodbath! Ban all the knifes!

Are you serious? Are you an adult?

Simple objects are not “bad” or good”, it’s the people who mis-use or abuse of them. If you go and study some real scientific criteria, then you would know the fundamental principle of Toxicology (Paracelso): “all is poison, nothing is poison, the dosage makes the poison”. As I wrote before, even water can kill you if you drink it in excess. So, why instead of putting your bed on education and information you think about giving up freedom and prohibitions?

Are you aware that the prohibition would make things worst? Why not to ban gunpowder? I think more people is killed by gunpowder than from alcohol.

Oh no! World is a dangerous place! Ban every thing! Everything can kill you! Oh no! To be alive is a guarantee you will die! Why not better to commit suicide? It’s causality too that to die you need to be alive before, and being alive means for sure you will die. Did you read well? FOR SURE! No statistical tricks, no correlations, only Cause-and-Effect!

Cramer you keep mentioning “pothead’s outraged responses” and I’ve seen few if any. So anyone who disagrees with you is a “pothead” and obviously “outraged”? Your logic fails you but perhaps the lack of same has become “a religion” to you. However, please read the following article and answer the question within these terms and tell us how you fit in here. I say you’ve come across as a progressive, meddling, nanny stater and if that’s “outraged”, so be it.

As much as I appreciate some the libertarian arguments for the legalization of “recreational” drugs, I think they are often too rosey. I think they often ignore the reality that most legal substances are actually regulated. Mr. Cramer’s article gives most prohibitionists
more ammunition for “protecting” us from ourselves.
Even if the prohibition against marijuana is lifted, it would still be regulated the same as alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drugs. Take for example, the county where I live. It runs ABC stores that are closed on Sunday, you can’t get cigarettes out of a vending machine, and you can’t even smoke in a bar. Not only does it restrict “sinful” substances, it taxes and fines the daylights out of them. If a business or a parent gets caught distributing legal controlled substances, they get fined. If they continue illegal distribution, they go to jail.

If marijuana is legalized, you can’t bet your bottom dollar that local governments and the Federal government will restrict it and find other ways of taxing you.
Lately the trend has been to add further restrictions
for the sake of protecting minors and providing public safety. This is why the the war of drugs has evolved into the war on fatty foods. It may not be any governments’ business to mind yours’, but they have a monetary vested interest in curbing your behaviors.

A couple of years ago, I read that marijunan is now California’s largest “cash crop”. I assume that may still hold true.

I think that’s a very bad indicator for the moral status of a society, sort of parallel to poppies being the largest cash crop in Afghanistan (coincidentally, a large source of revenue for the Taliban, whose religion pretends to abhor drug usage.)

Officialdom in financially strapped/on the verge of bankruptcy California salivates at the potential of legalizing and, subsequently, taxing marijuana. They’re very put out that all of you out there are getting your stuff sub rosa and they don’t have their tax hand in that pie.

Government in general salivates at the potential for rectifying some of its egregious spending habits over recent decades by imposing a new, wide range of “sin taxes”…soft drinks, anyone ?

Government, which purports to “care about” your health so much, especially these days with the First Lunch Lady’s new program & etc., wouldn’t ever dream of giving up its monstrous income from taxes on tobacco.

At my high school everyone smoked pot with few exceptions; the athletes got as high as the fatties, the cool kids got as stoned as the nerds. Even some of the teachers smoked, though never at school or with any of the students (I only know because I was friends with some of the faculty’s children).

Drugs are bad for people. Whether it be alcohol, marijuana, meth or heroin. Some kill you faster than others. Some may have beneficial effects for those suffering terminal illness. One thing that is not arguable however is that so long as drugs are illegal to possess innocent people are murdered to defend ‘territory’ and intimidate those who would defy the criminal distributors of the drugs. My nephew was shot in the back of the head walking out of a Wallgreens by a gangbanger wanting to demonstrate his prowess for his fellow bangers. His death was pointless, ridiculous and completely preventable. Had there not been a ‘market’ for illegal drugs in the area (he was not a user BTW he was there to pick up a friend who worked there) he would still be alive and graduating college this year.
Additionally the government has waged a ‘war’ on drugs now for over two decades. The cost is measured in the thousands of innocent lives destroyed and countless billions of dollars spent in the ‘war’. The net result is that the cost of drugs has gone down and the quality and quantity has gone up. One truly has to be a moron not to see that the ‘war’ has failed…and miserably so. There has been one unintended consequence (or was it?) though that is very troubling. The government through various forfeiture laws has abrogated large portions of the Bill of Rights. Your 4th, 5th, and 8th ammendments have all been severly damaged by anti drug laws. Infamously in Los Angeles County a wealthy property owner was killed defending his house from an intruder who turned out to be a Deputy Sheriff who wanted to seize the property for the county and thereby generate a good name for his future endeavors. The problem was there were no drugs anywhere on the property and upon rigorous investigation (prompted by the victims wealthy family as the County had no desire to do so) it was found that there had never been drugs on the property. The case against the land owner was based on perjured satatements by the deputy involved in the case(and interestingly the person who killed the property owner as well) with no other supporting evidence of wrongdoing. Yet another innocent person killed in the interest of the ‘war on drugs’.

“Alcohol is not harder for youth to get. They are both pretty easy, because so many homes have gobs of both. When I lived in California, I talked to a woman who was treating second graders with pot addictions–they were raiding Mom’s stash.”

Yes, it is, plain and simple. Throughout my teenage years, getting alcohol was hell, and when we did manage to get it, it was marked up 150-200% to cover the old men doing the fishing for us or the dial-a-bottle delivery man ignoring our lack of I.D. Meanwhile I could go out and buy weed, x, crack or anything else I wanted at the drop of a dime. Between ages 16 and 18 I smoked enough crack to get a small town high. Not defending crack, just saying that you are wrong about the ease of purchase. Even now, when I can buy booze legally, it’s no harder to get crack. Easier, actually, because I live in Ontario, and liquor is only sold in government licensed “LCBO’S” and “Beer Stores”, which are pretty common, but still less common than drug dealers.

Tanstaafl:
“For habitual, ifelong smokers I’ve known, I wouldn’t say that any of their lives have been enhanced by their pot use. ”

And who are you to judge whether another person’s life has been enjoyable enough for them? What kind of thought controlling little fascist are you? If a lifelong smoker is content to smoke all their life, if that’s all they want, IT’S NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS!

“The difficulty here is demonstrated by the potheads’ outraged responses. Pretty clearly, large numbers of potheads refuse to acknowledge that there are some significant risks.”

And Clayton, you refuse to acknowledge that any significant risks associated with pot use are neither here nor there. It’s a matter of personal freedom. I know of those risks, and I accept them, and that’s all that matters. I’m not going to force you to smoke pot, but you damn well better not try and force me to stop smoking it, or you can add another entry to your civilian self defense blog.

CRAMER::: Your response #107 tells me a lot about your myopic observational abilities. My post #50 was about the real reason cannabis, hemp, marijuana, whichever you want to call it became illegal, and of it’s thousands of uses other than just getting a temporary buzz, instead you chose to comment on paragraphs, your choosing to focus on style over substance speaks volumes about your lack of rational reasoning.

First, what you do to yourself is none of the governments business. If you want to distroy your health, who cares? Thus, there is absolutely no reason for the government to be in the drug regulating business. This all started in 1910 when religion and organized medicine got together to ram through laws that would restrict your access to anything without going through a doctor (I am a doctor). Do you actually see sense in making an appointment to see a doctor for pain in your back, wait weeks for the appointment, sit in the waiting room for hours, beg the doctor for a medication, wait at the pharmacy for all the paper work and then repeat the process when the drug runs out or does not work? That is nuts!!! Cavemen had better access to medications than we do.

Then consider that most “addictions” are not addictions but phsychological problems by a select minority of people who will be addicted to anything. Much of what you hear about addiction and problems with drugs is government bull.

Now the people who are going to use the hard stuff are already doing so illegally and the government war on drugs has done nothing to stop this. The result is funding crime and terror organizations. Thanks government.

Most doctors that I know are in favor of eliminating the DEA and other restrictions on obtaining drugs. Just think of the savings if we did so. We might be able to pay something of our rediculous debt.

What about considering what a fun time can be had when you are a bit high? Just like being tipsy, sparking a dooby every now and then can be a real hoot. This simple, yet extremely relevant fact, is always overlooked.

I watch the O’Reilly factor, like Bush (the whole damn family of ‘em), admire Mark Steyn and hope to hell the republicans clean up at midyear election time. And i do not refrain from dragging on a joint when it’s passed around my friendship circle. Most of my friends and acquaintances are like me that way. We all make pretty good money and not one of us is a loon. So, that’s a sample of about 50 right there, and not a loon in it. A lot of laughter, a lot of rocking out, a lot of good times … and zero mental problems. Sounds like a net win to me.

I am not contesting the social science findings. Grass may well double or tripple the likelihood to go schizo. But that likelihood is already so low. I’m just saying, quit ignoring the fact that smoking a doobie, while having a good time with friends will enhance the experience for a lot of ‘normal’ people. Scientific essays seem to pretty sniffy about acknowledging the ‘laugh your ass off factor’. I guess you don’t get your tenure at Oxford specialising in that factor. Pity.

Cannabidiol (CBD), has been eliminated from skunk through selective breeding to increase the THC content. The elimination of CBD causes psychosis. Lab studies show pure, synthetic THC causes transient psychosis in 40 to 50 per cent of healthy people. In stark contrast to THC, CBD appears to have an anti-psychotic effect.

Skunk, with a typical THC content of 15 to 19 per cent and a CBD content of zero, has come to dominate the street market. CBD elimination is a consequence of prohibition, as illegal drug markets always tend towards higher potencies.

Only in a legalized market can CBD be used to create strains which are less hazardous for users. Nature knows best, and that the reintroduction of CBD would be beneficial. Two molecules are better than one.

I couldn’t read too much of what the legalizers were saying, especially the ones who claim that they can put whatever they want into their own bodies, like their drug use is not affecting anyone else…parents, siblings, society at large. Adolescent brains, like their bodies, are still growing into their 20’s. All teens know that it is unsafe for the fetus if the mother-to-be ingests any drugs. I like to tell the kids that using any drugs as a teen is perilous to the ‘baby’ (fetal brain) that is still growing inside their heads.

Bill Perron: This is a basically conservative site, so I doubt if you’ll make a whole lot of converts by claiming that the anti-pot laws are a capitalist plot.

Take it from me: I have several times been on the verge of supporting full legalization of marijuana, and then changed my mind when I ran into some fanatic claiming that laws against pot are the only thing standing in the way of socialist utopia. You need to make your arguments fit your audience.

BTW, the argument that taxing marijuana would wipe out our deficit and pay for “health care” (aka socialized medicine) is bogus. Far more people use alcohol than smoke pot, and yet excise taxes barely make a dent in the federal budget.

Kyle: your argument is much more persuasive. I’d much rather support legalization of pot as a “party drug” than as the quasi-religious solution to all of mankind’s problems.

“If anything, instead of decriminalizing marijuana, we should be looking at discouraging alcohol — and recognizing that while Prohibition didn’t work, there may be approaches more educational, and less drastic, that can.”

Soooo why cant we just follow the same path for drugs? Like Holland which has the smallest percentage of youth pot smokers. Sometimes its the forbidden fruit that makes it attractive.

And what about cancer patients and others for whom medical marijuana would greatly improve their quality of life. Why should they be denied a treatment that exists?

Also I think those studies you cited are BS. They do not show scientific causation and there is all kinds of extra fillers that suppliers add into the drug. Regulation of production could end the practice. Therefore it is possibly the illegality of the drug that is causing the mental illness, kind of like when the government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition leading to many deaths.

Finally, ever wonder why crime suddenly exploded when a war was declared on drugs? There is more than just the immediate court and prison costs. Gang violence, property crime committed by addicts, police militarization, all the associated prison costs related there, plus the resulting violence from overcrowding of prisons resulting in less chances of rehabilitation for offenders which spawns even more crime when they are released. The thing has an exponential effect.

What you say is true. However, what about all of the innocent children murdered by the drug gangs who will never get to develop?
No one with half a brain will argue that drugs are bad. My argument is the tactic that we are using now is worse than decriminalization. We can clearly see that the drug war has increased the violence in our streets while simultaneously increasing the quality and availability of said drugs. It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that what we are doing is having the exact opposite effect of what we want.
Will people die of drug overdoses and accidents while under the influence of drugs? Absolutely, but and this is the big but, there will no longer be a reason for innocent civilians to be murdered by violent drug trafficers…so they, for the most part, won’t be any longer.

I can’t wait until untold millions all suddenly become psychotic. It’ll probably coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar. BEWARE OF THE SKUNK ZOMBIES! Which would be a fine name for a rock’n'roll band … if any could exist in Cramer’s meek new world.

One mistake I’m seeing again and again throughout these comments is the assumption that anyone who partakes in marijuana is immediately a “pothead” and therefore can not be a viable member of society. Someone who quietly and peacefully smokes a joint in their own living room after work is just as harmless as the person who enjoys a glass of wine. Of course, the situation changes when the amount is increased. But banning an entire substance just because it has the ability to be abused is just ludicrous. We as humans beings are the problem, not the substance.

There was no causality established by any study cited in this article. The author clearly does not understand the concept of causality, or realize that the very study he cited disclaims causality explicitly.

Decriminalizing marijuana is good public policy, because most of the harm associated with using marijuana is due to the legal status of the substance, not the effects of using it. Cannabis ought to be legal and taxed like other drugs. Of course, this would lead to a massive reduction in the supply of prisoners for the prison industrial complex, which is not popular with law enforcement types.

There is no cogent argument provided here for maintaining the current expensive and counterproductive policy on cannabis. It is wrong and wrongheaded.

KEN # 206;;;; You obviously don’t care about the historical facts of events. First it was not a capitalist plot, it was motivated by the GREED of a “capitalist”. I’m a capitalist and yet I’m not greedy, Hearst, Du Pont, and some very corrupt politicians, combined with an uninformed populace, was the perfect combination of ingredients to destroy any competition from the growing hemp industry. An industry that could easily create many thousands of jobs in the energy, clothing, food, construction industries. Please read “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” by Jack Herer and learn the true facts behind the abomination created by greed and fear.

There are quite a number of extremely harmful prescription drugs causing much worse outcomes and they are being handed out like aspirin to unsuspecting patients under the guise of medical care. The costs of this to our society may be insurmountable if it continues. Shouldn’t we stop this immediately and make it illegal?

The amount of sodium in the average person’s diet is doing what to their mind and body? No one really knows for certain but many studies show it definitely isn’t good. Same goes for sugar, etc. Shouldn’t we stop this immediately and make it illegal?

The insanely high cost of the “war on drugs” started back in the 70′s is probably reason enough that it should be legal for adults to grow and utilize whatever herb/plant they choose in the privacy of their own homes provided it is for personal consumption only.

It’s interesting to note – many of the people against legalization are taking mind altering prescription drugs on a daily basis themselves.

It’s rather humorous that Mr. Cramer has referenced more than once “potheads’ outraged responses”, without once noting that the only posts advocating violence on the thread are from drug warriors. It is also sheer hyperbole to claim that many arguments of “harmlessness” are being made, a number of anti-prohibition posts have explicitly noted that there are as of yet unidentified risks to marijuana use(lung cancer seems likely).

Keep turning a blind eye to the wackjobbery of drug warriors who think that potheads should be open game(how many are sipping a beer as they write I wonder?), it really makes your argument about pissing on the Constitution stronger…/sarc

I used to think Clayton Cramer was one of those one-in-a-million, men of principle. Turns out he’s just an average Joe. Like most people, of course he supports freedom, but only when it comes to things that he enjoys or approves of. If he doesn’t like it, or if he thinks it’s too bad for you to be worth the risk, then it should be banned! Of course, he supports individual freedom…. if it does good for society (the nation, the collective, the party, the borg, whatever one decides to call their zombie army… and not the good kind of Zombie, she’s on our side)

I know of those risks, and I accept them, and that’s all that matters.

It would be good if you knew what the risks are–which is unlikely, since the mental illness risks are largely ignored by the news media. It would also be good if kids, who lack much in the way of long-term thinking, were kept away from marijuana, at least until adulthood.

It’s rather humorous that Mr. Cramer has referenced more than once “potheads’ outraged responses”, without once noting that the only posts advocating violence on the thread are from drug warriors.

Uh, no. See #200, where one of your potheads threatens to kill me if I come and try to stop him from smoking pot.

I have absolutely no interest in stopping an adult from smoking pot if it is so darn important that he is prepared to kill someone over it. But there are advantages to keeping something illegal simply because it does make it a little harder for teenagers to get.

There was no causality established by any study cited in this article. The author clearly does not understand the concept of causality, or realize that the very study he cited disclaims causality explicitly.

1. Actually, there’s more than one study cited.

2. It is true that a longitudinal study (as several of these are) still relies on correlation analysis to demonstrate a connection between A and B. But one of the reasons that longitudinal studies are so dramatically more persuasive than simply a correlation analysis is because it is dramatically more likely to establish the direction of causality. If you find that a particular problem appears in a group characterized by several different traits (for example, people over 50 with syringes in their medicine chests have diabetes), a current moment correlation analysis won’t tell you if the syringes caused diabetes, or the diabetes caused the presence of the syringes. A longitudinal study does a much better job.

Decriminalizing marijuana is good public policy, because most of the harm associated with using marijuana is due to the legal status of the substance, not the effects of using it.

So, are you arguing that the increase in schizophrenia associated with heavy marijuana use is because it is illegal?

Yes, something needs to be done about the alcohol problem in this country before we start worrying about marijuana.

Why does it have to be an “either…or” situation? These are both serious problems. I would agree that alcohol is the more serious immediate problem–but that doesn’t mean that marijuana isn’t also a problem. Alcohol, unfortunately, has become a core of our society. It may not be too late to prevent marijuana from doing likewise.

I used to love the TV show “COPS”. Kind of like looking at a train wreck. What is most striking is how the majority of shows involve someone who drank too much. The psychotic behavior created by some idiot abusing booze is accepted, but the “fraction of pot smokers going to go crazy and join the 1-3% of Americans who are psychotic” is unacceptable……..

That is, wouldn’t the BILLIONS of $’s spent every year to combat Pot smoking (including the cost of incarcerating wholly innocent casual users) be better spent on dealing with the supposed drawbacks from legalization?

Care to give me a list of “wholly innocent casual users” of marijuana who are in prison? There must be some, somewhere, left over from the days when Texas gave a third time felon life for possession of marijuana. But most state prisons are busting out at the seams. There aren’t that many people in prison for simple possession of a personal quantity of marijuana. (“Honest, judge, I was going to smoke all 500 kilos the afternoon the police arrested me!”)

I agree that there are more effective strategies for discouraging marijuana use than simply arresting users. But when the government started encouraging businesses to drug test employees–the complaint was that this was unfair. When the Reagan Administration pushed for educational campaigns against drug abuse–the same crowd started complaining about that.

I’ve asked the question before here, and no one answered: if decriminalizing marijuana is necessary for personal liberty, why not decriminalize meth? The lack of response tells me that a lot of you aren’t doing this based on principle, but your need to have a high-sounding justification for your pot problems. I’m impressed how many people can see that meth is tremendously destructive to a society, and therefore acquiesce to those laws–but suddenly get all high and mighty about marijuana.

There are quite a number of extremely harmful prescription drugs causing much worse outcomes and they are being handed out like aspirin to unsuspecting patients under the guise of medical care. The costs of this to our society may be insurmountable if it continues. Shouldn’t we stop this immediately and make it illegal?

I believe that the FDA has that responsibility. Could you give some examples? Oh, and I’m not taking the Scientology front organizations very seriously, sorry.

But so what? Your laws are not stopping the use of marijuana, but are still supporting ruthless cartels.

If you mean that the laws are not completely effective, no argument. There are two reasons for this:

1. No law is ever completely effective. You need to write laws based on realistic expectations. Some have argued that what made Prohibition fail was that it was too broad–that a ban on distilled alcohol would have been easier to enforce, and accomplished many of the positive social objectives.

2. To a large extent, we stopped treating marijuana as a serious drug. I am old enough to remember when possession of an ounce or less was reduced from a misdemeanor to an infraction–and guess what! I couldn’t go to a concert anymore in Los Angeles without the disgusting smell of pot smoke.

Every law works at the margins. It doesn’t work perfectly. Sometimes, they barely work at all, if the law is too broad. But any law that criminalizes possession or sale, simply by prohibiting advertising and open sale, is going to drive up prices, and thus reduce demand and consumption. Since marijuana causes some people (at least young people) to have increased risk of schizophrenia, keeping it illegal has a net positive effect on that part of the problem.

I have no interest in seeing anyone going to jail for smoking pot. I do have an interest in seeing pot not as widely available as it was where I lived in California–where the police would just wave to teenagers smoking pot on the streets of Cotati.

Even if these medical studies are completely true, i.e, that marijuana use is linked to mental disorders, what is the current law enforcement approach doing to alleviate the situation?

If you mean that prohibition has no effect on the level of use, that’s clearly false. It was false during Prohibition, too. Cirrhosis of the liver death rates fell by about half, within a few years of Prohibition–and came back up again to the pre-Prohibition level afterwards.

If you want to argue that the costs of drug prohibition exceed the benefits, that’s a worthwhile discussion–but first, you need to acknowledge that there are substantial costs to having it legal. The armwaving insistence in the comments that it doesn’t do any harm, or not much harm, pretty well shows that a lot of people are terribly afraid of admitting that this question of cost and benefits might be a bit more complex than it first appears.

As in the case of alcohol prohibition, people are going to use drugs whether legal or not.

If prohibition doesn’t make any difference at all, then why do you care whether the laws are enforced or not? Pretty obviously, it does have an effect. At a minimum, it drives up costs, and because of that, reduces demand. I would think that especially in the 10-16 year old set, the reduction in demand would be most dramatic, because this is the crowd with the least disposable income. And this is likely the group at greatest risk of excessive use leading to later mental illness problems.

It seems to me that the crux of your argument is based on the unstated major premise that legalization would increase the long-term rate of marijuana use, which true or not is not sourced in your article.
If you aren’t going to bring any credible evidence for legalization increasing marijuana use to the table, then I don’t see how your conclusion follows from your argument. If say, legalization were to reduce the amount of marijuana use then your argument would actually serve as an argument FOR legalization.

What a foolish, shallow, and third rate article. Twenty Five years of scholarly study? Nothing but percentages, with no hard numbers. I’ve seen better examples of logic and clear thinking in high schools. I hope he wasn’t paid for this nonsense.

@Clayton E. Cramer
>Since marijuana causes some people (at least young people) to
>have increased risk of schizophrenia, keeping it illegal has a
>net positive effect on that part of the problem.

Untrue. As Expected repubs need the facts repeated like a parrot:

Cannabidiol (CBD), has been eliminated from skunk through selective breeding to increase the THC content. The elimination of CBD causes psychosis. Lab studies show pure, synthetic THC causes transient psychosis in 40 to 50 per cent of healthy people. In stark contrast to THC, CBD appears to have an anti-psychotic effect.

Skunk, with a typical THC content of 15 to 19 per cent and a CBD content of zero, has come to dominate the street market. CBD elimination is a consequence of prohibition, as illegal drug markets always tend towards higher potencies.

Only in a legalized market can CBD be used to create strains which are less hazardous for users. Nature knows best, and that the reintroduction of CBD would be beneficial. Two molecules are better than one.

1. Schizophrenia is not infective, and if it’s a genetic problem (as you’ve suggested when you claimed above that it is infective) then other solutions than prohibition are needed.

2. The active ingredient in Marijuana is THC. Above you’re challenging someone to prove that THC causes mental problems — well, you’re the person who claims it does, and so the onus is on you to prove it, not on the people who tell you that it isn’t. If you think that the problem is some other substance than THC(as your post suggests), then go ahead and educate us.

3. You’ve not addressed the issue of poisoned marijuana at all, can we assume that you find that to be acceptable if our kids (and other people) risk permanent disability by consuming adulterated drugs? (for example, glass dust added to make up the weight, pesticides and other substances mixed in to bulk the drugs out).

4. You challenge the fact that many prescription drugs are far more harmful than marijuana. Here is a simple one for you: Aspirin. It’s so dangerous that you can no longer buy more than 16 in the UK per shop, mainly because people who commit suicide with this drug tend to die slowly over 2 weeks in agony from irreversible liver failure. Another danger is that some of those drugs when taken together with alcohol they result in hyper-aggressive young men who are almost unrestrainable by police as even serious injuries are not noticed, the kids keep fighting like Superman-turned-Zombie. Yet other drugs can be filtrated with simple methods and thus the pure addictive substance can be procured in meaningful amounts. I could go on but I hope you’re getting the idea, please do your own research and you’ll find that there are many more over the counter drugs that can be subverted, Ritalin for example is often abused as a poor man’s Viagra, which is why it is so popular.

5. Your socialist drug warrior thinking is an anathema to any conservative thinker. Conservatism is based on the idea that people are being responsible for themselves and so do the right thing, with the result that the state does not have to nanny them. If we don’t allow people the freedom to fail, we soon will have a society where no-one will ever be at fault for anything, because big brother didn’t look after them.

Point 5 is probably the salient point here — you need to decide which side on the fence you’re sitting on from first principles, instead of working backwards from your dream of the perfect world.

It’s ironic that socialist thinking has so deeply infiltrated conservatism in this way, it’s one of the most destructive forces there is currently, because it turns myriads of young people away from us (into open socialist arms) as it locks us out from popular youth culture.

Major kudos to Clayton Cramer for actually reading and responding to the comments!

All of the problems caused by availability of marijuana and other drugs come from using them. Almost all of the problems caused by the War on Drugs come from the prohibitions on sale and possession. I don’t see why it is necessary to legalize usage at the same time as sale and possession. A ban on advertising could be included.

Admittedly a set of state bans on usage (fed has no authority for this) will be somewhat less effective in preventing usage than the current system.

However, it would not carry the same tacit implication that usage is OK that many would see in flat-out legalization.
It would eliminate the biggest profit motivator for violent crime and gangs.
It would eliminate the biggest profit motivator for police corruption.
While still an offense against personal liberty, it would eliminate one of the most glaring violations of the Constitution and the one that has been most commonly used as justification for other violations.

223
Spoken like a true moonbat Mr. Cramer. Congratulations on dodging the question by using a post made beyond yours, which I didn’t see as I scrolled down to respond to what you said. And if you going to equate “Trespassers will be shot” with “Big govt. should provide hunting licences for Group ______ “, Moonbatistan may be the place for you. Perhaps Markos can give you job.

What a crock. No causal link, and totally defective reasoning viv-a-vis the medical costs, because you don’t bother to mention the costs of, “The war on some drugs,” which has been billions upon billions – apologies to the late Carl Sagan – year after year, decade after decade. Besides, end socialized medicine, and there is NO monetary medical cost… even if there was a causal link, of course, which there isn’t.

I enjoyed pot for decades, voted for Ronaldus Magnus, and have had no… Woah!… Did you see that?!… I can’t be the only one who saw that!!!…

“If you mean that prohibition has no effect on the level of use, that’s clearly false. It was false during Prohibition, too. Cirrhosis of the liver death rates fell by about half, within a few years of Prohibition–and came back up again to the pre-Prohibition level afterwards.”

I will take higher incidents of cirrhosis of the liver over a highly increased police state any day of the week.

Non-prohibition – person drinks too much alcohol, develops cirrhosis of the liver, me and my family live our life without ever knowing or being affected.

Prohibition – person has an illegal operation going on in basement of house, and because of one incorrect number on warrant, heavily armed, unidentified men kick open my front door at 11:00 pm, point a loaded semi-automatic weapon at my wife’s head as she is handcuffed on the floor for over 3 hours without any explanation as to what is happening, and then leave the house ransacked and the front door off broken off it’s hinges. Next day, police cheif assurses neighborhood that his officers didn’t do one thing wrong, and my family now has to live in constant fear of what law enforcment might do next in their “war”.

CRAMER;;;; Why do you only focus on the false perceived negatives of legalization when you know the benefits of legalization in the food, construction, clothing, medicine, and paper products industries, far outweigh any negatives ? And if you do reply please make it an intelligent complete response, not your usual status quo of buzz words and misrepresentations. Thank you.

The government is not of one mind about any of the so-called “wars” we’re fighting. War on Terror, War on Poverty, War on Drugs, etc.

Most of the arguments here seek to degrade opponents. I hope I don’t come across that way. But there is a serious moral issue here.

We know the health of children exposed to 2nd hand tobacco smoke is affected. Marijuana smoke is far more toxic. So consider that in your internal debate.

No, I don’t think it should be legalized. No, I don’t think users should be given life sentences. But how about a compromise:

1. If you are caught using marijuana or other illegal drugs, you lose all federal, state, and local health care benefits for life. And you pay a fine based on how much stuff you had.

2. If you are caught selling illegal drugs, you have 15 minutes to rat out your supplier or you are put in a hole and dirt is put on you (yes, while you’re still alive and regardless of who you rat out as the backhoe is dumping soil on your sociopathic carcass. If you “turn State’s Evidence”, you are sent away for 20 years, with time off for good behavior.

Ragweed causes more suffering and medical costs than marijuana, so why is it legal?

It is estimated that $7B per year is spent on allergies in the US, how much is spent treating marijuana induced skitzofredia?

It is estimated that there are 10 deaths per year in the US from laytex alergic reaction, never one reported case of death from marijuana.

Maybe if people actually raised their kids to have judgement they wouldn’t think we need a police state to protect them from temptaion.

The bottom line is that those who favor keeping marijuana illegal do so because they either profit from it, are ignorent about it, or just get their kicks from enforcing their sadistic will on others by confiscating family homes, ruinging lives. . . or maybe burying people alive.

An earlier poster said everyone he knew who smoked marijuana ended up being a social mis fit etc. I can think of a couple who did, I also know several who became managers and scientests in fortue 50 companies and the federal government, so much for antedotal evidence.

The prohibition zealots have more loose screws than the most schitzofrenic of users.

I have seen a lot of people become criminals because drugs are illegal. Abusive use of drugs is a serious problem but prohibition has its problems as well. Unless you have swift, harsh enforcement you tend to create criminals. A drug user now also has a criminal problem. If our efforts would have worked I think you could have a point but they have failed. We have a corrupt prison construction issue also. If someone drives high or sells to kids execute them or whatever but people seem ready and willing to use. I do not know if you will ever get rid of substance abuse except when the user wants to change. It is just another big giant expensive monstrosity that our government seems always ready to impose on us. Leave us alone . You cannot manage your own lives and yet you tell us what to drive, eat, smoke etc.

The founders certainly grew hemp (for rope). I’m not aware of any that smoked marijuana.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson occasionally exchanged “hemp smoking mixtures”.
“Some of my finest hours have been spent on my back veranda,
smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see.”
- Thomas Jefferson
August 7, 1765: “–began to seperate (sic) the Male from the Female Hemp at Do–rather too late.”
- George Washington (from his diaries)

Please explain how you are going to do this, when, as some commenters here have explained, their parents got them started smoking pot.

The same way we do it for alcohol and cigarettes. I think that you will find that some parents don’t make good decisions with their children and these drugs as well. The same can be said of high sugar foods. Should we ban these as well?

Cannabidiol (CBD), has been eliminated from skunk through selective breeding to increase the THC content.

Not true. It is true that growers have focused on increasing THC content to the point that some sativa strains have around 20% THC content and relatively low concentration of other canabinoids, but there has not been a focus on removing those other canabinoids. Harborside in Oakland tests all of the marijuana that they dispense and post the THC content and the content of other canabinoids. Many indica varieties have THC levels in the 9-12% range and relatively high levels of other canabinoids. Time of harvest also effects the relative concentrations.

Many of the criminalization advocates have created the false dichotomy: criminalize or remove all legal boundaries for access to everyone.

Mr. Cramer
The potential danger the studies you cite indicate is for heavy use by children, not adults and not light to moderate use by either. I don’t think people are arguing that we should allow children to smoke pot (or cigarettes, or drink alcohol), they are arguing that prohibition for adults is counterproductive and an undue limitation of personal liberty.

Jeb 247,
I can not find any verified reference to your first quote except in a movie. While it is true that hemp was extensively cultivated prior to WW2 that hemp was generally not suitable for smoking due to it’s low THC content, it was used for rope and paper.

None the less, if the founders had thought it was any of the federal government’s business to control what we the people ingest, why didn’t they put it into the Constitution? My guess is they didn’t because they knew it wasn’t any of the government’s business.

Legalize marijuana and with the stroke of a pen you give tens of thousands of citizens the chance to become worthwhile members of society instead of being labeled as “criminals,” you save millions of dollars wasted in trying to enforce the present laws, and you take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the pockets of international criminal organizations. The logic is inescapable and great minds like Bill Buckley Jr. knew it.

An opinion (which you mis-stated) regarding the 5 or 6 lifelong habitual pot users I’ve known shouldn’t bother you any which way.

Maybe I’ll add touchiness to the list of traits & qualities of the lifelong pot smoker.

(Interesting comment above as to the adulteration of cannabis that is “skunk”. Cigarettes have also been chemically enhanced/treated to heighten the nicotine delivery system, a factoid that was intentionally concealed by the tobacco industry.)

A powerful essay, and thanks. As must be expected by this late date, it’s set off a rant/counter-rant between those who think it can be stopped by law and the “libertarians” who contend that it’s a harmless social pastime, and ‘taint nobody’s bidness what I do. Gentle fairy tales about how passive and sweet smokers are fly in the face of everything I’ve seen in a county which bases much of its economy on production and sales of “Medical Marijuana.” Casual criminality is endemic on every level from schoolchildren to the county courts; violence and gang wars are everywhere. And this is in a town of 100,000, over 50 miles from San Francisco.

The point that is universally ignored these days is that the genii’s out of the bottle. De facto legalization is the virtually unalterable state of affairs, and the question of whether to pass more laws has the same valence as the argument that more gun laws will eradicate gangsterism. Probably a lot of fun to yell about, as long as you realize it’s solipsism defined.

More important is “What are we going to do about reality?” The current marijuana production in California, for instance, is worth almost twice the income from vegetables and grapes combined. The “harmless weed” now averages more than 5 times the THC content of that available in the mid-’70s. 2 days ago a 5th-grade student was busted at school for having brought THC-infused candy with her lunch. She unblushingly admitted that she knew very well what it was, having been given it by her older sister who bought it at a “dispensary.” The local cops pledge to find out whether the sister had a prescription for the stuff. Period.

It’s a brave new world, folks. Stop getting self-righteous about legalization; it’s over, they won. And for God’s sake spare me the prattle about comparing it to alcohol. Any regular pot smoker knows that comparing alcohol to marijuana is a shuck, “healthier” be damned. I don’t know what’s to be done about it, but that’s a step beyond people who claim they do.

Setnaffa thinks people should literally be buried alive for supplying a market niche that only hurts those who willingly expose themselves to it (the argument that it is harmful to society or the users family and friends is bunk for anyone who cares about liberty). The issue of drug legalization is a good way to expose stealth leftists who pose as conservatives.

Regardless how it happened, selectively bred skunk is causing psychosis on the street. Like anything in nature, balance must be restored. Skunk has been domesticated to the point where it’s dripping THC. This is common knowledge.

In one human study, published in Neuropsychopharmacology (DOI: 10.1038/npp.2009.184), Sagnik Bhattacharya and colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry in London used functional MRI brain scanning to study the effects of THC and CBD on the brains of healthy volunteers. They found that THC and CBD acted in opposition; in brain regions where THC increased neural activity from a baseline, CBD decreased it, and vice-versa.

Another study from the Institute of Psychiatry by Marta DiForti and colleagues reached similar conclusions for chronic psychosis. They compared the cannabis habits of 280 newly diagnosed psychotic patients with those of 174 healthy volunteers who were matched for age, sex, educational attainment and socio-economic status. Both groups were equally likely to have tried cannabis, but, strikingly, psychotic patients were seven times more likely to have been skunk users. So in real life, as well as in the lab, THC unopposed by CBD appears to be particularly hazardous for mental health (British Journal of Psychiatry, vol 195, p 488).

Bah humbug.. those studies have no credibility. Which came first, the chicken or the egg. Maybe people who are predisposed to schizophrenia are more likely to engage in marijuana smoking. It is well documented that people with diagnosed schizophrenia engage in such activities. And besides, the risk of the possibility of mental illness shouldn’t be an argument to keep it illegal. If we follow that logic, we should make tobacco illegal because it causes lung and oral cancer. We should prohibit alcohol because it destroys your liver and your brain. All I got from that commentary was a reinforcement of the hypocrisy of our government. End story.

It’s one thing to be against pot because it might be harmful to some people, quite another thing to support our current prohibition laws, which are even more harmful to many more. One reason we are so bad at drug eduction is, we make drugs illegal and undermine rational discussion. Drug laws don’t stop drugs — at most criminalization makes drugs more expensive, attracting violent, greedy people into the business — and giving them a huge incentive to push drugs to kids. The history of this is laid out brilliantly in Mike Gray’s Drug Crazy, now available to read for free on line at http://www.libertary.com/books/drug-crazy. If you do think marijuana is harmful, this would be a good reason for education and drug use prevention, not our current drug laws that have no real imact on use but result in hundreds of thousands of people in prison and thousands of people killed each year in pursuit of the huge ill-gotten profits that accrue to drug lords.

“If anything, instead of decriminalizing marijuana, we should be looking at discouraging alcohol — and recognizing that while Prohibition didn’t work, there may be approaches more educational, and less drastic, that can.”

That’s like having both feet with a minor infection and saying that we should amputate one of them, but not the other.

For me it’s an obvious personal choice. If people taking drugs or getting drunk would confine themselves until the effects are gone, I’d agree with the idea that it’s their own business if they want to destroy themselves, although that’s an immoral attitude. (Am I my brother’s keeper?)

But they don’t. They drive, fly airplanes, captain ships, beat their wives and children, disturb the peace, and generally make the rest of the world unsafe for us. Americans have always overused alcohol. I don’t know the numbers, but I do wish we could control ourselves, because moderate use of alcohol has been shown to improve heart health. How many people can’t have just one or two beers and stop? As for recreational use of psychotropics, I see it as using your brain like a video game. And a mind is a terrible thing to play games with.

The idea that it’s nobody else’s business what I do, is an offense to the idea of a civil, safe and prosperous society. We’ve done away with many nuisance laws that protected our right to live in peaceful enjoyment of our own and public property, on the basis of intellectual arguments that either deny the plain meaning of our Bill of Rights, or extend its terms ad absurdum. Self-destructive behavior hurts more than just the ones who engage in it. That has been common sense, until relatively recently, but to say so now gets you called a Nazi, Fascist or Anti-American.

“because moderate use of alcohol has been shown to improve heart health.”

Actually, a couple years ago some researchers went through the data from the original “OH is good for your heart” study, and removed “former drinkers”(who are frequently alcoholics who spent years abusing alcohol) from the “nondrinkers” group, and when they reparsed the data, there was no significant difference in heart health.

This didn’t receive a lot of publicity, for obvious reasons.

“The idea that it’s nobody else’s business what I do, is an offense to the idea of a civil, safe and prosperous society.”

“If you mean that prohibition has no effect on the level of use, that’s clearly false. It was false during Prohibition, too. Cirrhosis of the liver death rates fell by about half, within a few years of Prohibition–and came back up again to the pre-Prohibition level afterwards.”

I will take higher incidents of cirrhosis of the liver over a highly increased police state any day of the week.

1. A police state (“the War on Drugs”) isn’t a necessary part of having marijuana illegal. Nor are no-knock warrants, civil forfeiture abuse, etc. You can have something be illegal without turning it into a holy crusade.

2. The claim was that drug laws don’t reduce social costs, because they don’t reduce drug use. And that is demonstrably false with respect to Prohibition.

It’s one thing to be against pot because it might be harmful to some people, quite another thing to support our current prohibition laws, which are even more harmful to many more. One reason we are so bad at drug eduction is, we make drugs illegal and undermine rational discussion. Drug laws don’t stop drugs — at most criminalization makes drugs more expensive, attracting violent, greedy people into the business — and giving them a huge incentive to push drugs to kids.

The mere fact that criminalization makes drugs expensive reduces use. Guaranteed. Any drug for which demand is completely inelastic with respect to price is clearly an addiction of extraordinary power and destructiveness–and marijuana, at least for the vast majority of its users, isn’t that powerful.

Now, I agree that the social costs of a drug prohibition can be higher than the social benefits, depending on what the social costs are, and the social benefits. I would agree that heroin is almost certainly in that category. I’ve seen no evidence that heroin causes mental illness. The case for decriminalizing heroin has always been much stronger than the case for decriminalizing marijuana.

I am not contesting the social science findings. Grass may well double or tripple the likelihood to go schizo. But that likelihood is already so low.

Let’s see, about a 1% chance of any given person developing schizophrenia. If you double the chance (from smoking pot at least weekly), that’s a 2% chance. If you had a revolver with 100 chambers, one of which was loaded, that’s about the risk of developing schizophrenia without pot. If you had any choice in the matter (and sense), you would not play Russian Roulette with such a gun, would you? Now change it to 50 chambers, one of them loaded (the apparent risk from regular pot smoking). Would you pick up that gun, point it at your head, and pull the trigger, just for the giggles with your friends?

“I wonder how much the American taxpayer pays for the effects of sexual promiscuity.”

Good point. Ignoring all the other problems promiscuity causes or is associated with, just think of all the money spent on AIDS research. Ban promiscuity, and that will fix the problem. Just throw everyone who engages in sex outside of marriage in jail, and poof, no more AIDS.

Except, that won’t work.

You do realize that a few years before AIDS suddenly became a MAJOR public health problem, a number of states (California among them) decriminalized homosexuality? Before 1975, oral and anal sex were criminal acts in California. As a consequence, homosexual sex was completely illegal. There’s no question that there was still homosexual sex going on–but it was certainly nowhere near as common. After 1975, there were public bathhouses where men would lie on couches, face down, while a stream of men would come through for completely anonymous sex–dozens of guys a night.

Do you suppose that, as ugly as the old law and its enforcement was, it might have restrained the enormous promiscuity that made AIDS burn like an expensive wildfire through our society?

Argue if you want that the costs of such laws exceed the benefits, or that it caused a lot of hypocrisy and dishonesty. But don’t pretend that the laws didn’t have an effect.

2. If you are caught selling illegal drugs, you have 15 minutes to rat out your supplier or you are put in a hole and dirt is put on you (yes, while you’re still alive and regardless of who you rat out as the backhoe is dumping soil on your sociopathic carcass. If you “turn State’s Evidence”, you are sent away for 20 years, with time off for good behavior.

Sorry, but I don’t see quite how marijuana’s very real social costs justify this sort of Iranian law enforcement. The choices aren’t: “War on Drugs” or “decriminalization.” The choices can include:

1. Very strict punishment of dealers (perhaps in prison), with fines for users.

2. Only enforce possession laws against people who smoke it in public, and prohibit sale or possession for sale.

3. Only punish sales, with the primary focus being educational efforts about the risks.

4. Prison time for providing marijuana to a minor (including your own children).

5. Heavy fines for providing marijuana to a minor (including your own children).

Why do you assume that no-knock warrants are necessary to drug laws? I’ve written before on my blog about how no-knock warrants, while they have a place, it needs to be in quite extraordinary circumstances: hostages; national security cases involving explosives. If you need a “no-knock” warrant for a drug case, the risk far exceeds the likely benefits. If the quantity of drugs are small enough that they can be flushed down the toilet, why are you risking lives kicking in the door? If the quantity of drugs is large enough to justify a no-knock warrant (say, a couple hundred pounds of cocaine), you can turn off the water supply to the place before executing the warrant.

It seems to me that the crux of your argument is based on the unstated major premise that legalization would increase the long-term rate of marijuana use, which true or not is not sourced in your article.
If you aren’t going to bring any credible evidence for legalization increasing marijuana use to the table, then I don’t see how your conclusion follows from your argument. If say, legalization were to reduce the amount of marijuana use then your argument would actually serve as an argument FOR legalization.

I find this so implausible that I am going to want to see much more evidence. Certainly, marijuana is effectively legal in California. Possession of small quantities was decriminalized in the late 1970s, and soon, I couldn’t go to a concert without the smell of it driving me out. When I moved out of California in 2001, the use of it had become so prevalent that you had to be a real rebel to not smoke pot in middle school.

AST, I’d call you a tyrant, because you are one. The same logic you use, that drug users will invariably harm other people whilst high, could be used against anyone. Typical liberal argument from the same kind of people who say that more people owning guns will lead to more gun violence.

Politics is rarely about left and right, mainly because elements of both are evident in liberal and conservative arguments. Things are actually much simpler: overall, there are people who want to control the lives of others, and those who do not. Cramer, you’re one of the former, and no amount of verbal gymnastics or rationalisation can change that. Every post you make is about control of others.

#258 — The Kevorkian case proved just how far gone most people are today. People who have the right to their own life can choose to end it. The state has decided that they have the right, not the individual. Similarly, self-destructive behaviour is deplorable, but if you have any rights at all, you also have the right to stupidly throw your life away. It’s your life, or it’s not.

All you’re doing here is making the case — “we’re sorry, it costs too much for you to be allowed to decide stuff for yourself, therefore Cramer and I will decide for you” — that the state, the collective, has more right than the individual. This is not what the founding fathers had in mind.

***

They say a dark age isn’t when you forget how to do a thing, but that you don’t know that such a thing even existed. Where it concerns liberty, apparently we live in such an age.

CRAMER, CRAMER, CRAMER, are you totally trying to emulate that other CRAMER on Seinfeld who never really thinks things thru and only sees what he wants ?? You have totally ignored any of the benefits of hemp in the clothing, food, construction, paper, and medicine industries. You ignore the thousands of jobs hemp industries could create right here in America. Why ? Is it because you are just unaware? Because it goes against your agenda? Because you don’t care if others earn a living because you are cold and unfeeling? Why do you avoid the whole issue ?

“Let’s see, about a 1% chance of any given person developing schizophrenia. If you double the chance (from smoking pot at least weekly), that’s a 2% chance. If you had a revolver with 100 chambers, one of which was loaded, that’s about the risk of developing schizophrenia without pot. If you had any choice in the matter (and sense), you would not play Russian Roulette with such a gun, would you? Now change it to 50 chambers, one of them loaded (the apparent risk from regular pot smoking). Would you pick up that gun, point it at your head, and pull the trigger, just for the giggles with your friends?”

Maybe I would do that, and if I did, it would be none of your damn business. Nothing would likely happen, but if I died, it’s my own damn fault.

Clayton, you do seem to enjoy selectively replying to comments. You refuse to respond to any of the pro-legalization arguments that use the freedom argument, because you can’t without coming out and admitting that you are not for individual freedom. So instead you just ignore them, hoping that those of us who love freedom, freedom for all, won’t see through you, and will continue to ignorantly and naively think you stand for liberty just because you support the second amendment.

It also guarantees that those who are willing to break the law are given both means and motive to defend their market share as ferociously as any legitimate business, while also providing them with less disincentive towards violence since drug trafficking laws already hang a sentence equivalent to murder over their heads.

Maybe you are one of these fancy rich people who live in a gated community with guards that largely prevent the effects of drug war-related violence from hitting home, but not all of us are that fortunate. Just a week ago, a drug dealer was shot and killed a few miles from where I live, and I hardly live in the ghetto. Next time it may be some innocent little kid who gets hit by a stray bullet fired from a pusher’s machine gun, a gun that he/she may not have been able to afford had they been using a 7$ an hour wage from McD’s instead of the hugely, artificially, inflated profits from illegal drugs.

I don’t know about you, Mr. Cramer, but I don’t consider the lives of the thousands of innocent bystanders ruined by the drug war a worthy price to pay for nothing better than a government sanctioned soapbox that folks like you can preach from.

You asked earlier if those of us against the drug war would support legalizing meth. No one has answered yet, but I will. The answer is yes, I support the legalization of all drugs, as I think that laws should focus on punishing the behaviors of people, rather than attempting to legislate away an inanimate object that possesses no capacity to do anything by itself.

I hope that you are logically consistent in the positions you keep repeating, and also favor “discouraging” the use of alcohol, tobacco, caffeinated drinks, aspirin and ibuprofen use for anything less than moderate pain(as the hepatotoxic and glucocorticoid suppressive properties of those chemicals likely outweigh the analgesic benefits for a mild headache, i.e. the use of those drugs for anything less than a 3-4 on a 10 point pain scale is recreational use as far as I’m concerned), and any other over-the-counter medications that are overly detrimental to the body if used for mild versions of their intended target symptoms.

You should probably also step up to the plate in favor of gun control, if we’re going to blame the drug for the misbehavior of the drug user, it makes just as much sense to blame the gun for the misbehavior of the gun user.

You wrote
“Arguing for decriminalization of marijuana because alcohol is a big problem is like arguing that because one of your feet is gangrenous the doctor should also amputate the healthy foot just to be even-handed.”

You have this completely wrong, it’s like arguing that because one of your feet is gangrenous you should amputate the other foot because it has a minor infection, and leave the gangrenous foot alone. The alcohol foot is NOT amputated, it is perfrectly legal, but the much less harmful cannibus foot is banned/amputated.

From back in the middle of the pack, I made the only point that matters, but in abstract terms. Not clear enough, I guess.

Now, let me be specific–

Mr. Cramer, as a free man, I do not need your moralizing, nor that of the government, to tell me what to do with MY body.

It is MY body–get that?

Not yours, nor the government’s. Do you, in your wildest moments of imagining you can control others, get that simple fact of LIBERTY? MY body. If I cannot rule my own body, then freedom is a waste-word–a myth. You wish to make liberty a myth with your convoluted reasoning.

The instant I permit either moralists like you, or the idiots in DC, to “define” my liberties as a human being, I am no longer free.

I am sure you will have a response to this . . . but in doing so, you will only PROVE my point. You want to rule over my body.

Go find another crusade. Consider pursuing one where you do try to properly restrict liberties. It is abundantly clear you are clueless on the meaning of liberty. Neither you nor anyone else, government included, should even make the attempt.

BTW–I don’t smoke. But I know not to permit my rights to freedom to be abridged by you or government.

Your are talking about an 8% reduction in something that affects 1% of the population, or roughly stated, if we could completely ban THC, it would make one-tenth of one-percent difference. Big “if”.

Contrast that with the roughly 20% of all prison inmates who are arrested, sentenced, and housed by the state for essentially victimless crimes, when those resources could be used more productively catching rapists and other violent criminals.

You say that there is a downside to decriminalization that is not discussed. Hello? Every single PSA on TV talks about the downsides. Every official on TV who speaks about “scourges” talks about the downside. Sorry, but that argument just doesn’t hold water.

There is a downside, no doubt. But when you weigh the downside vs. the upside, there is no contest which harms society more.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson occasionally exchanged “hemp smoking mixtures”.
“Some of my finest hours have been spent on my back veranda,
smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see.”
- Thomas Jefferson
August 7, 1765: “–began to seperate (sic) the Male from the Female Hemp at Do–rather too late.”
- George Washington (from his diaries)

Jeb, you might want to smoke a bit less of the herb before posting stuff like this. I’ve searched for all occurrences of “hemp” in the Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress. There is no such quote from Jefferson. Nor is there any reference to the phrase “hemp smoking” in the George Washington Papers. Washington certainly did separate the male from female hemp plants, but at 1:340, the notes explain:

HEMP: Cannabis sativa, a highly profitable fiber crop, providing work in the off-season. After the 1720–22 sessions, the General Assembly offered a bounty of 4s. for every “gross hundred” of hemp, water-rotted, bright, and clean, to encourage production (HENING, 4:96–97). GW speaks of separating the male and female plants. “This may arise from their [the male] being coarser, and the stalks larger” (CALENDAR [1], 457). In the 1790s he experimented with a variety from India.

Contrast that with the roughly 20% of all prison inmates who are arrested, sentenced, and housed by the state for essentially victimless crimes, when those resources could be used more productively catching rapists and other violent criminals.

Relatively few are there for marijuana possession, however. You might have a fine argument with respect to heroin, which doesn’t have any demonstrated ability to cause permanent mental illness.

Maybe you are one of these fancy rich people who live in a gated community with guards that largely prevent the effects of drug war-related violence from hitting home, but not all of us are that fortunate. Just a week ago, a drug dealer was shot and killed a few miles from where I live, and I hardly live in the ghetto.

No, I live in a state that actually still enforces its marijuana laws pretty seriously, and has very, very little crime. Is it possible that your problem is not that you have drug laws, but that a reluctance to enforce them with any vigor encourages traffickers?

I will agree that there are serious and horrifying consequences when drug dealers make gobs of money selling stuff to consumers. That’s why reducing consumption is an absolutely necessary part of any successful effort. That generally requires some education–but it also requires there to be incentives to not be part of that market.

One of the more irritating aspects of marijuana is that while only a small percentage of potsmokers go insane, a large percentage become religious fanatics, to the point where they spew the most nonsensical trash as part of their worship.

Well, Clayton. I live in a state that does not enforce it’s marijuana laws very seriously, (California), and they amount of crime has dropped.

Is this an interrupted time series study to which you refer? What is the methodology used to determine that limited enforcement has reduced your crime rate? I don’t dispute that it might well have happened, and for the reason that you are saying. But simply asserting that crime rates fell and that these are connected isn’t very persuasive.

There’s no question that, all other things being equal, decriminalizing should probably reduce crime rates. At a minimum, there are less drug crimes, and there might be fewer crimes connected to trafficking. But I would like to see some evidence on this.

As I also pointed out in the article, I agree with this part of the claim–just that there are other social costs associated with decriminalization.

CRAMER still ignores the benefits of industrial hemp, he cowardly refuses to even comment, such biased and fearful cowardice only makes you look small CRAMER, very biased, fearful, and small.

It’s easy to ignore your claims, Mr. Perron, since a number of them I have already demonstrated are WRONG.

1. There is no evidence to support your claim that Washington and Jefferson smoked pot.

2. Your quote about Washington separating male and female plants implies that this was to smoke them, when the source makes it clear that the motivation was for industrial use.

3. Your claim about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution being written on hemp is simply false. They were written on parchment.

4. In light of your astonishingly poor track record on facts, on what basis is the “Betsy Ross flag” made of hemp? Hemp is widely used in that period for the making of ropes–but I’m more inclined to suspect that flags in that period are linen or cotton.

Have you got any sources to back up your various claims? I mean, real sources, not pothead sources?

There are no “alchohol” or “cigarette” gangs because it is easier and safer to buy them openly. Now that there are pot dispensaries on every corner, why go to the guy with the gun?

Mr. Jones, if you actually read what I wrote, I actually agreed that decriminalization is likely to reduce some sets of social problems. It’s in my second paragraph. My point was that it is not the only part of the equation, and some of the social costs of decriminalization are going to be quite high as well.

CRAMER You are so wrong about everything you have mentioned, for verification of all the values and historical facts of hemp that you requested are to be found in one book: “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” by Jack Herrer please read, learn , and then you can send me an apology. In light of your astonishing poor track record of demonstrating your ignorance of history and fact you better read the book because you will learn how wrong you are. The book contains photos of historical documents that back up all I have told you. You have my e-mail address DON’T FORGET I WANT AN APOLOGY AFTER YOU HAVE READ THE BOOK!!!!

This quickly spreads far beyond the negative side-effects of recreational drug use, to monitoring your weight, what foods you eat, how much time off you should get to keep your stress low, what you should be exposed to in the media to keep your blood pressure down…

There are two ways you can eradicate crime associated with the drug trade. The first way is to legalize all drugs. The second way is to have a police state. In post #281, Clayton Cramer expresses his preference for the latter.
Mr. Cramer, you want to live in a police state, I suggest you move out of the United States.

And Mr. Cramer is still selectively replying to posts. He hasn’t replied once to any commenter who has used the freedom argument. This only further demonstrates that Clayton Cramer is no fan of freedom, yet he’s too much of a coward to come right out and say it. If I am wrong, Mr. Cramer, I challenge you to prove it.

Hi, in the past 25 years there has been a ton of new societal changes, like the mass prescription of pills ect…. I know I’m coming off as a paranoid hippy, but believe me, I’m a right winged conservative. You have to keep that in mind.

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This guy is not a doctor or a scientist. Bipolarism? Anyone can say anything about anything, it doesn’t make it fact. Re-educate yourself before speaking. Pot may make a bipolar individual worse but it doesn’t make a person bipolar.

Marijuana does NOT cause schizophrenia. The rate of marijuana use has increased by leaps and bounds over the past 50 years while rates of schizophrenia and related disorders have remained stable since they were first identified. Schizophrenics self-medicate because schizophrenia is a living hell. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for perpetuating this ridiculous notion that schizophrenics are to be blamed for their unfortunate conditions. Schizophrenics already suffer from societal rejection every single day of their lives. They don’t need you to demonize them even more.